A Crew For Every Engine
by Heimchen
Summary: Henry's occasional fearful behaviour finally takes a human toll and his two crewmen request a transfer. Luckily, a fortuitous inquiry from abroad offers a solution. An EU story set in the CGI Thomasverse.
1. Part One

This is a companion piece of sorts to the Thomasverse fanfic I published earlier and very much one of those 'if I were in charge' type stories. The hero this time is Henry, but not the RWS Henry or even his model or UK-voiced CGI self. No, the version I love is his US-dubbed CGI self, the one where he's got a vaguely New England accent which descends into neurotic New Yorker territory whenever Henry's majorly stressed out. Whichever version of him you personally like best, though, the poor guy needs a better crew, someone willing to help him through his nervous-nellie shenanigans better than the oblivious lot they've featured on the show so far. So…I gave him one.

Disclaimer: The following story is intended for non-profit entertainment purposes only and is not meant to infringe upon the rights of any Thomas The Tank Engine/Thomas And Friends copyright holders.

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE…

Part One

It was a bright, sunny day on the Island of Sodor when Henry's world as he knew it came crashing down. The day had begun so auspiciously too. He'd had a flawless run with The Flying Kipper, making all his stops on time or early. The track had been clear and fast, the sunrise had been gorgeous, the dawn air mild and sweet. By the time they'd pulled in at Knapford, Henry had made up so much time that his crew pulled him into the terminal track so they could go off for a bit of a break and a snack before checking in with dispatch for their next assignment. Or so Henry thought. Instead of coming back with new orders in hand, his driver and fireman came back with Sir Topham Hatt and several other people. The lot of them moved up to stand before the green engine's front, where he could easily see them.

"Good morning, Henry!" the Fat Controller exclaimed with effusive cheer. "Doing well, are we? You're looking good."

"Thank you, sir." Henry, always a bit nervous, wondered why he was being singled out, but was far too polite and appreciative of any positive attention thrown his way to voice any concerns. "I'm feeling good, sir."

"Excellent! That's excellent indeed. Henry, do you know who I've got with me?"

Henry looked at the group accompanying Sir Topham Hatt. He could see his driver and fireman, of course, and both of them were smiling, and there were two additional people, a man and a woman, wearing matching blue suits and also smiling. Henry wondered if they were railfans and a couple. They just had that look about them.

"I don't— No, sir," he said, growing more curious. It wasn't very often that Sir Topham Hatt actually introduced people to one of his engines.

"Ho ho! Well, this _will_ be a surprise then. Henry, I want you to meet Mister and Missus Doyon. Pierre, here, is a fireman, and Denise drives, isn't that something? And they've just come all the way from Canada to work with you, imagine that! They'll be riding along with your regular crew for the rest of the day to get a feel for you and the way we do thing here on the Island. I'm sure I can count on you to be on your very best behavior." He turned his attention to the people he'd just introduced. "So, this is Henry," he continued, indicating the big green Stanier with a flourish of his hand, "one of our very hardest working engines. Henry and his crew were already up before dawn delivering fresh fish all up and down the east coast this morning. It's just one of their many typical jobs."

"Sounds lovely," said the woman. "Pierre and I have always enjoyed early morning runs. It's such a pretty, peaceful time of the day." She cast her gaze over Henry with open admiration. "And this is a lovely engine. Hello, Henry! I'm very pleased to meet you. _We're _pleased to meet you."

Henry gazed back at her. Sir Topham Hatt's words had registered well enough. He'd introduced him to two new people, and Henry understood that one was a fireman and that the other was a driver. But his eyes kept sliding past the woman as he looked for the driver. His brain just couldn't grasp that the woman _was_ the driver because it didn't make any sense. Things that didn't make sense always made Henry anxious, and as the seconds ticked away while he tried over and over again to make the connection, he became ever more agitated. Sir Topham Hatt was getting upset too. Henry's dumbstruck response was not at all what he'd expected.

"Ahem, as I said, these are Mister and Missus Doyon, from Canada," he prompted. "Say hello to them, Henry."

"Excuse me?"

It came out as such a startled, frightened little yelp that Sir Topham Hatt's mouth actually fell open with surprise and Henry's old crew exchanged glances of real concern. Pierre Doyon looked up at the canopy, feigning a sudden fascination with how it was structured, trying not to laugh. The only person who kept their composure was the object of contention herself, Denise Doyon, who was from Canada. She just kept looking at Henry with interest and waited.

"Oh dear. He's normally a friendly engine…" the Fat Controller muttered.

"Oh, that's quite all right, Sir Topham Hatt, sir," Denise said. "I get this all the time, even back in Canada. Most locomotives just aren't used to the idea of a lady driver. It takes them a little time to settle down, and once this fellow does, I'm sure we'll get on just fine."

"Dat is ver' true," Pierre chimed in, his strong Quebecois accent instantly attesting to his ethnic roots. "All de engines, dey love 'er once she drive dem. She 'as ver' kind 'ands."

"That's what I like to hear," said Sir Topham Hatt, regaining some of his good cheer. "I do expect my engines to work hard, but I also insist that they be treated fairly and with kindness."

"Understood, sir. Pierre and I wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm certain that Henry here will calm down and that we'll all be chatting up a storm before you know it."

"He'd better be," threatened his old driver, glaring at his recalcitrant engine with mock ferocity, and everybody laughed. Except for Henry. Henry felt as sick and dazed as he'd felt while lying in the snow immediately after the disastrous Flying Kipper crash which had sent him off to Crewe. The worst part was that even though Sir Topham Hatt had laughed and put on a happy face along with everyone else, Henry could still tell that he was disappointed with him. It cut him to the quick and made him feel faint.

The only good thing was that nobody tried to talk to him again. Henry couldn't have answered at that moment anyway. He'd literally been stricken dumb and didn't know why. The dizzy, whirling feeling that kept him silent and tense began to mercifully fade as the humans continued to ignore him and focused instead on the practicalities of how his controls were set up within his cab and the best ways of maintaining his fire and filling out his logbook. Before long, Sir Topham Hatt wished his people well and returned to his office. Henry braced himself, hypervigilant for what would come next.

When his old driver asked him to move out from the platform, he jerked forward, jostling everyone onboard.

"Sorry," his driver muttered. "He only gets like this when he's nervous. He overreacts."

"Can we take him out where he can burn off some of his nerves? Or does that make it worse?"

"No, he'll settle. He's normally very smooth around the platforms. The passengers always like him when he pulls coaches."

"How often does that happen?" asked Denise.

"Not often enough. He's usually on goods duty. It's a shame because he's ideal for mixed-traffic work."

"Powerful enough for freight. Fast an' good-looking enough for de' passengers, dat's what we always say for our mix-traffic ones," Pierre said.

"That's a good way to put it," Henry's old fireman remarked.

A small station came up and Henry's old driver pulled him to a nice easy stop at the platform, waited a moment, and then sent him on. The green Stanier moved out without any of the nasty lurching from before. He'd indeed gotten over whatever had caused his messing about earlier on and was ready to listen and behave himself. Henry's old driver sighed and patted the side of his cab, a little nostalgically. It wasn't the start to their turnover he'd been hoping for, but the two new crewmen—or should that be one crewman and one crewwoman?—seemed good-natured and willing to forgive Henry for his poor first impression.

"He seems okay again. Want to take him?" Henry's old driver offered with a smile.

"Absolutely!"

Henry felt the humans in his cab shift around and then new hands on his controls…hands that were unfamiliar, soft, and weirdly small. The strangeness of it almost made him jump ahead again, but why? He'd known crew changes before and umpteen different relief drivers. And it wasn't as if this new person were doing anything wrong; in fact, Henry could already tell that she was experienced and confident as drivers went. His apprehension began to subside as the seconds ticked away in an utterly uneventful fashion. It was just a new driver, and a new fireman too, and neither had been anything but pleasant to him since the instant they'd met. He shouldn't have been so foolish, acting the way he had and refusing to say hello to them, and in front of Sir Topham Hatt too! Instead of feeling anxious, Henry started to feel ashamed of himself. He almost groaned aloud with regret as he kept chuffing along, for there was no redoing their first meeting. He'd just have to be very careful and very attentive from now on to do exactly what was asked of him by any of the people riding in his cab and hope they'd overlook his temporary lapse in manners.

Another station came along and this time it was his new driver who eased him to a brief stop and then sent him on, and again absolutely nothing bad happened. If it hadn't been for the hands on his controls feeling so small, it could have been any of a number of relief drivers he'd known in the past directing him.

"Mm. Nice and light," the woman commented. "And he actually is quite light in weight, isn't he? Compared to the locos we have over in North America, I mean."

"Well, he's no Big Boy, that's for sure. Maybe seventy-three, seventy-four long tons, give or take."

"Oh, that is light. Easy on the fuel, I imagine? My husband's lazy."

"Hey!" Henry heard his new fireman exclaim, after which everyone aboard laughed a little. He didn't quite get why the possibility of his new fireman's being lazy was funny—Henry didn't think so—but supposed it was a human thing. They laughed about a lot of things for reasons he didn't quite understand.

They soon passed the junction with the branch line down to Brendam and his new driver asked if there were any stretches coming up on the mainline where it would be safe to let Henry speed up a little.

"Well, there's Gordon's Hill not far ahead. It's a fair grade. We could have a bit of a go up that."

"Oh, perfect," the woman said happily. She patted the side of her new engine's cab. "Sound good to you, Henry?"

Henry said nothing back. He wasn't at all sure whether his new driver actually wanted him to answer her. His old driver never did, even though he sometimes spoke to him too while he was on the move, but this was a new person with brand new expectations. Poor Henry started to fret. He thought some more about whether he should have replied to her question and by the time he decided that he probably should have, it was too late to do so without sounding like a nitwit, so he started worrying about not having replied instead. And all the while, they continued on towards Gordon's Hill, where he'd be asked to go faster, if what he'd overheard was correct. He waited anxiously for his cues, hoping he wouldn't mess that up either.

Then came the wail of a very familiar whistle, not far behind. The Doyons, the only individuals present who weren't familiar with the whistle's origin, perked up at once.

"Uh oh. Are we okay?" Denise asked.

"We're fine," Henry's old driver assured her. "That's just Gordon doing his express run. He'll be on the fast track."

"Yeah, big blue Pacific engine," the old fireman added. "We ain't in his way, but he'll blast at us even so like we wuz, just wait an' see. Thinks he's really something."

"Why? Because he's got a hill named after him?" Denise could just see the aforementioned feature coming up and began playing with Henry's throttle, juggling his speed.

"Hardly!" the old fireman snorted, firing in a few shovelfuls of coal as he spoke. "It's his favourite place to stall! I know y' were joking about yer husband earlier, but that engine IS lazy. He works until he thinks he's done enough, and then…good luck gettin' any more out of him."

"Gotcha. A primadonna…"

The whistle wailed again, a good deal closer. Denise poked her head out of her cab window and looked back, calculating the oncoming engine's speed. "Whoa! He's fast."

"Flying Scotsman's brother. He ought to be," said Henry's old driver.

"Heh, competition," said Henry's new fireman. He leaned some over his wife, tall enough to peek out himself over her own head. "Ahh, look at dat. Ver' fast loco. We match dat, _oui_?"

"We will if Henry's willing," Denise murmured. She glanced over at Henry's old driver. "Is that okay?"

The other man nodded, a little bemused. The woman at once opened Henry's throttle some and was pleased with his immediate response, the quick surge forward, and started to grin. She asked for more speed and again Henry leapt forward and Pierre crossed the cab floor to peer out and began scanning the track ahead.

Henry, of course, was only doing what was being asked of him and trying to make the best impression possible. He didn't even register at first what was going on, that his new driver was running him up to try and match Gordon's speed. Then he heard someone shouting at him, the deep voice of his new fireman yelling as he hung out of his own cab window.

"_Vite, Henri! Allez allez allez!_"

The big green Stanier had _no_ idea of what the man was saying to him. But his tone came through, loud and clear, and it excited and encouraged Henry. The tracks beneath his wheels began to rise. He shot up the incline, his throttle now wide open, his own grin broadening to match his driver's. He hadn't been asked to run full-out in…in…forever. And it felt wonderful!

The sound of someone else's loud chuffing briefly overrode his own. It was Gordon and the express all right. Coming on fast and hard to his left!

"Henry! What are you doing!"

Gordon sounded furious. Henry knew he was in trouble. But for once he didn't care because a weird exhilaration had taken hold of him, shielding him against the other engine's rage. He spun his wheels faster than ever, straining and huffing, trying his utmost to accelerate as ordered. Gordon's angry, scowling face came briefly into view. For a few seconds the two locomotives raced side by side, exactly even with one another, both of them working too hard to speak, then Gordon's long passenger train began to weigh on his momentum and he appeared to slow and fall behind. Henry, by comparison, seemed to shoot forward. For the moment, at least, he was the faster engine.

Henry roared over the crest of Gordon's Hill well in the lead and it felt even more wonderful. Even though he knew he'd pay for it later, he couldn't help laughing and shouting, "Hi, Gordon! Bye, Gordon!"

But the curve…the curve! Steeped in his intoxicated delight over his own speed though he was, Henry still recognized the appalling danger and knew that he couldn't possibly navigate the curve at the bottom of Gordon's Hill without slowing down. He considered braking on his own initiative, always a horrible, guilt-ridden thing for him to do, to override his human crew. Yet before he could act, he felt the hands of his new driver move on his controls with firm assurance, easing back his throttle, applying his brakes, and he acquiesced to the woman's directives with relief. She seemed to know just what she was doing, too, and slowed him just enough to take the curve safely, and then bumped his speed back up as soon as his track straightened again. Henry chuffed along obediently throughout, intrigued. His regular driver had never let him negotiate the curve at such a quick clip, yet he'd felt stable and grounded throughout.

"Nicely done," he heard his old driver say to the new one. "I confess my heart skipped a beat or two for a moment there, but you slowed him well. Bit faster than I'd go, though."

"Heh heh, yes, my apologies if I alarmed you. Your Henry does handle an awful lot like a loco I used to drive back in Canada, though, so he already feels somewhat familiar. Which is kind of weird since the one I'm thinking of is about triple Henry's weight and has another twenty feet on him at least. That one was named Francois. A type we call a Royal Hudson…mixed-traffic, too. There's just something similar in the way they respond despite the different specs."

"Why a 'royal' Hudson?" the old fireman asked. "I've heard of Hudsons—we've got one that runs in from the Mainland sometimes, fact is—but that's not the same thing, innit?"

"Not quite, and some of our Hudsons are just called exactly that, just Hudsons. The ones that got their royal status got it after your reigning monarchs visited Canada way back in the late thirties and your King was impressed by the Hudson engine pulling the royal train at the time. He gave the railway that owned him permission to change that particular class's name and for the engines to wear Royal Crowns on their running boards. Our Francois was one of the lucky ones awarded a Crown."

"Impressive. And that's a good idea, rewarding the engines like that," the old driver said. "Our Gordon got to pull Her Majesty's train once on Sodor."

"Yeah, ol' fastest and best, or so he thinks," the old fireman added, with a laugh. "Well, he got his today. Pompous sod… He'll give Henry a bit of what-for later in the sheds, for showing him up just now, just wait and see."

"Will he really?" Denise said. She chuckled as well, intrigued by the very notion. "Competitive, are they?"

"Gordon's competitive. Henry not so much. He's too kind to take it seriously…aren't you, Henry, old lad?"

Henry felt another reassuring pat on the side of his cab, but it wasn't quite enough to take away the gloom of knowing that his old fireman was dead right. Gordon was going to be mad at him, really mad. Not something to look forward to. On the other hand, the humans were speaking nicely about him and the new driver thought he was light and responsive…that was a good thing, right? And being described as 'kind', Henry could live with that. Better that than be considered a pompous sod!

After some further conferencing in his cab between the two crews, Henry found himself being eased back down and over across the fast track and into a siding. There, they waited. And sure enough, here came Gordon, catching up at last, no doubt still steaming mad as well as just steaming. Henry felt a sudden real regret for having inadvertently upset him and whistled a tentative greeting at the blue Pacific as he zoomed past. Gordon didn't whistle back. Ah well…

Henry was steered back onto the left-hand track once Gordon had passed and then switched back over onto the middle track of the mainline. And then something strange occurred… His new driver again ran him up, even faster than before, yet as soon as he'd built up some momentum, she eased him right back down to his starting speed, juggling his throttle and brakes together to decelerate him as quickly and smoothly as possible. They ran along for a while, then the request for speed was repeated, followed by the same equally swift slow-down. By the third repetition, Henry understood exactly what was being asked of him and had it down pat. His new driver was evidently trying out his paces and handling and he was glad to demonstrate just how sensitive to his cues and obedient he could be.

Once his apparent trial was over, Henry was asked to chuff on at a much steadier rate, all the way up to Vicarstown as it turned out. The green engine cruised along cheerfully, feeling much happier than before. He knew that he'd pleased his new driver for there'd been a pat and a soft murmured "good boy" for him every time he came back to hand, and he'd afterwards overheard both drivers speaking very kindly about what a nice responsive engine he was.

Once at Vicarstown, he was parked at one of the less used platforms and all four crewmen disembarked, his old driver going off to fetch a station guard to keep an eye on the engine while they left him. His new driver, though, came forward to speak to him before she went off with the others. What she wanted to talk about was what Henry thought of her driving so far.

Henry stared back at her, completely befuddled. He could not remember a single time in his entire long life that a driver had ever asked him about the quality of their driving. The humans rode in his cab and used his controls to signal what they wanted him to do and he either did it or not. Whether their commands were to his liking or even made sense wasn't part of the relationship. He had no idea of how to answer her.

"Um…"

The new driver was still gazing back at him, awaiting his reply. He started to flush. She smiled a little, with apparent encouragement, for which he was profoundly grateful. The last thing he wanted was to make his new driver angry or to disappoint her in any way. Although Henry would never know it, the woman was actually struggling to contain her delighted laughter at that moment, for she'd never met an engine so bashful that he got beet red and couldn't talk at all when questioned. And him being such a big strapping fellow and all!

"Would the word 'okay' sum it up?" she suggested. "Not good? Bad?" A hint of amusement had crept into her tone. Henry picked up on it and his panic began to subside. "Maybe…fine?" she added gently, her grin now big and obvious.

"It's fine," Henry breathed, his own voice just as soft.

"Well, thank goodness then. We wouldn't get on too well if you dreaded it every time I stepped in your cab."

"No…"

He averted his eyes, still too shy to speak and look at her for very long at the same time. But his new driver, Denise, could see curiosity tugging at his taut mouth and that his blush was fading and she knew that he was warming to her despite his difficulties. She briefed him on their plans for the afternoon, confident that he was paying attention even though he only glanced at her now and then.

"See you again after lunch, Henry," she concluded. "Enjoy your break."

"Yes. Thank you…ma'am."

Getting bolder, Denise thought happily. She patted the edge of his running board before leaving to rejoin the other waiting crewmen, which startled Henry a little and made him stare after her again until she'd passed from view. He hadn't expected her to touch him like that. The only patting he got was typically done to the sides of his cab while he was working and it meant that the humans approved of his behaviour…yes? Henry heaved a huge sigh, feeling a little anxious again. He wished he could get over the fact that his new driver was a woman, but it was just so unfamiliar, so odd. He wasn't sure how to relate to her or how he should interpret her actions. The only woman he ever even saw with any regularity at all was Sir Topham Hatt's mother, the Dowager Hatt, and Henry always felt a little afraid of her at best.

As for the humans, they went over to the station's service area for railway workers where Henry's old crew took some time to show the newbies the amenities and to introduce them to some of their new colleagues, the stationmaster and dispatcher among others. They also offered their all-important ratings of the various food vendors present at the station, the end result being that Henry's new crew wound up purchasing a packet of hot chips from one recommended stall to enjoy along with the lunches they'd packed in their kits. The four of them then made use of the station's spacious crew lounge to take their noon break and chow down. Henry's old driver in particular was still grateful that the two Canadians had been willing to engage in a bit of subterfuge concerning their new engine.

"Thanks again for playing along with us leaving just to crew Edward," he said to the pair. "The last thing we want is for Henry to find out that we requested a transfer to another engine. He's such a kind fellow and it would hurt his feelings if he knew, but…well, better a half-truth than none at all."

"No problem," said Denise. "I can understand your wanting to spare him."

"Yeah… To be honest, we hate to give him up at all—he's a terrific worker. But I've got two little kids and a third on the way…"

"And I've got four," Henry's old fireman pitched in.

"…and neither of us can afford to be taking unnecessary risks anymore. Even this last incident…bad enough we got a bloodied nose and sprained wrist out of it between us, but if our injuries had been reversed…"

The old fireman was already nodding solemnly. "Don't think I coulda shoveled too well with a bum arm. Just as well I just smashed me face when he stopped."

The newbies winced. Going face-first into the front wall of an engine cab was no laughing matter.

"The worst of it was that I didn't have the slightest warning this time," Henry's old driver continued on. "I used to be able to anticipate him, even when he stopped dead. And his balking and the bolting…manageable if annoying. We'd even laugh about it afterwards sometimes. But now… Driving him's just no fun anymore. I feel on edge the whole time, nervous, and I think he can sense it which makes him more nervous too." He paused and regarded his new colleagues sadly. "I'm sorry. It must sound like we're dumping a real problem engine on you."

"Aww, don't say that," replied Denise. "He seems really sweet. And he can't be any worse than some of the characters we've worked with in the past."

Pierre, who'd mostly been munching his sandwich until then as he listened, immediately grinned. "Like Twitchy."

"Twitchy?" the old fireman repeated, starting to grin himself.

Denise laughed. "Well, that wasn't his real name, obviously. Just the one we used for him between ourselves. A big freighter we crewed back in the day in New Brunswick. He wasn't quite like Henry, not at all sensitive and really not that nervous, but he did have one insane, silly fear; he was petrified of running into a moose when we did our runs through the woods. Why exactly, we could never get out of him. He was big and heavy enough that he would have just smashed any animal aside. Anyway, he was bad enough that he'd screech to a halt if he spotted anything even vaguely resembling a moose near the tracks. Even a downed tree trunk with a couple of branches hanging down could set him off."

Both of Henry's old crewmen were intrigued by now. "Did y' get him fixed?" the old fireman asked.

"Actually, yes! We got a fitter to come and replace Twitchy's whistle with a new, super-duper one with an ultrasonic tone to it that only animals could hear. Of course, all the fitter really did was take off his whistle and then put the same one right back on, but Twitchy didn't know that. We had him convinced that his new whistle could repulse even the biggest bull moose. So we do our next run and gave him free rein to use his whistle as much as he wanted and I swear he blew that thing before crossing every forestry road and every teeny curve, no matter how gradual. He also wanted to race along like a nut, a lot faster than he used to, because he was now sure that no moose would ever trouble him again. Then came his day of reckoning when we careened around a curve and there actually was a moose on the tracks! Twitchy fired off his whistle at it and the poor thing must've gone three feet straight up in the air, then took off like a missile, smashing through the undergrowth. That was the end of Twitchy's being afraid. After that, he'd fly through his runs, blasting his whistle throughout, and always pull up early at our end station in a great whoosh of steam, proud as could be that he'd vanquished all the evil moose in the woods again. Of course you'd never get away with that sort of thing here—it's way too populated—but where we drove him, the worst Twitchy could do was deafen a bunch of squirrels and porcupines. Ah, he was a good engine at heart… Crazy-noisy and you always had to hang on tight when he did any runs through the forest, but it was still better than him screeching to a halt every couple of miles."

The woman's story drew its fair share of laughs before the end and a good bit of admiration. "I guess Henry seems pretty tame next to that after all," Henry's old driver admitted. "But he is the same in one respect. Anytime he misbehaves, I can guarantee that it's nerves or fear-related. He really does get scared. It wouldn't even occur to him to disobey you in any sort of defiant way."

"I understand," said Denise, "and I promise we'll treat him as well as possible…"

The subject of their discussion, meanwhile, had been enjoying his break for the most part, just as suggested, and had decided that he would try and start viewing his new driver as strictly that, a driver, and to ignore the fact that she wasn't male. Once the humans finally did come back, though, he quickly discovered that it wasn't as easy as he'd hoped for. Henry listened in on the conversations within his cab as much as he could throughout the afternoon, yet never did get used to the two new voices interspersed with the two familiar ones he'd grown to like and depend on. The woman's voice was just too jarringly high-pitched, too…female. And his new fireman…his voice might have been reassuringly deep, but Henry couldn't get past his strong accent at times. Great… One of his crewmen he couldn't understand and the sight of the other one made him feel faint. Henry just knew he was going to make a fool of himself again.

But the work itself…pure pleasure. A sightseeing trip, really. Down to the steamworks, up to the Blue Mountain Quarry, over to Ulfstead Castle and other favoured tourist destinations…they visited them all as the hours passed. His new driver would always take the controls when they came up on a station and practise easing Henry to a stop in just the right place and then taking him out again, otherwise the two drivers traded off handling him. Henry was surprised by how easily he could differentiate between their styles now that the woman was driving him halfway normally and not pushing him to extremes or trying out his paces. Her touch was much lighter, almost imperceptible at times, as long as they were cruising along on an open track, and she let him go a lot faster than did his old driver. She only took a firm hold when around the stations or if other traffic approached whereas his old driver, Henry now realized, kept a strong grip on his controls at all times.

Despite the momentous nature of his day, Henry found himself back at the Tidmouth sheds later that afternoon at close to his usual time, and also as usual, he was the first engine finished for the day. Both crews lingered for a while—he could hear them discussing the particulars of his daily paperwork in his cab—then they left without any more ado. Henry gazed after the departing humans thoughtfully. His new and old crews were going to take him out together on his Kipper run in the morning, he'd overheard, and he found himself rather looking forward to that.

Other engines began to return to the sheds, first Percy, who also began his days early with his mail run, and then James and Thomas. One by one they arrived, were done up by their respective crews or not, as the case might be, and the berths gradually filled up. Gordon came in last. Henry could see him already glaring at him as his own humans polished up the controls in his cab a bit and knew that the big blue Pacific was just itching for them to finish up and leave so he could verbally light into him. Engines usually waited until their crews were gone before getting immersed in conversation with their fellow engines. All the other locos were already yakking up a storm, comparing notes on their day's experiences, but Gordon, what he wanted to say most was definitely not for human ears.

Sure enough, Gordon's crew had barely made it out of the yard before Gordon felt free to turn on his shed-mate and unleash his wrath.

"Henry!" he roared. "WHAT do you think you were doing racing me up MY hill this morning!"

The other engines quit chatting at once, shocked into silence. Henry? _Racing?_ The accused offered a sickly grin of appeasement.

"I wasn't racing," he tried to explain. "It was just my new driver, wanting to see how well I could accelerate up a slope."

"How well you could _accelerate?_ Your driver had to bellow at you to make you _accelerate?_"

"That was my new fireman, actually. He was just, um, encouraging me."

"You have a new crew?" Edward interjected before Gordon could snap back another retort. The other engines were likewise thawing out of their self-imposed conversation freeze. Thomas was the quickest to add the next query, about a subject of far more interest to him than anything to do with the humans who rode around in their cabs.

"You were racing Gordon?" he asked excitedly. "Who won?"

"We weren't racing," Henry reiterated. "I was just doing what my driver wanted. Gordon just happened to come along while she was trying out my paces."

"Wait. You said…_she?_" Edward all but yelped.

Now everyone was staring at Henry.

"She? You have a woman driver?" Emily cried. A huge smile blossomed on her cute face. James, on the other hand, started to hyperventilate.

"A woman…" he breathed, sounding completely befuddled. "A woman…drove you?"

"But who won the race?" Thomas insisted.

Gordon started laughing. "A woman driver! Why am I not surprised that you're the one to be stuck with a woman driver!" He took a deep breath to let fly with another disparaging remark, but it withered as he realized that the other engines were glaring at him with nearly uniform expressions of disapproval and outright hostility. Even Percy seemed annoyed.

"What's wrong with a lady driver?" he said. "I think it'd be…nice."

"Exactly!" Emily chimed in. "Oh, this is so cool! _Is_ she nice, Henry? Did you get a chance to talk to her yet?"

"Not very much," Henry admitted, flushing a bit as he recalled how silly and tongue-tied he'd been whenever the human had gone out of her way to speak with him. "I think it'll be all right, though. I overheard her saying that I handled a lot like another engine she used to drive, something called a Royal Hudson."

The others mulled over that particular factoid for a bit, even Gordon.

"Connor's a Hudson," mused James. "Isn't he?"

"He is, but he's not a _Royal_ Hudson. It must be some other, maybe similar class," said Edward.

"I think it's something Canadian," Henry added. "That's where my new driver's from—Canada—and my new fireman too. I think they're married."

"My goodness, Henry!"

Edward's exclamation of surprise spoke for all of them. All of the engines present moaned and groaned about their crews at times and had stories to tell about them, but in some ways the humans who drove them and tended their fires and groomed and maintained them were somewhat interchangeable in their machine minds. The expectation was that they'd always be male and always originate from somewhere within the British Isles. That Henry was about to acquire a new crew who was proving to be such an exotic exception to the rule was a matter of considerable excitement for them.

"Huh!" Gordon snorted. "I didn't know all that. They must do things quite differently in Canada then. I couldn't understand a word that new fireman of yours yelled at you. I suppose he was speaking Canadian."

"It was probably French," Edward corrected gently. "Some people in Canada speak French." He turned his attention back to the green Black Five at the end of the shed. "Well, Henry, it seems as though you're involved in establishing something historic. I don't believe there's ever been a female driver—or fireman—on the Island, and probably not on the Mainland either. I also don't think we've ever had a foreign driver working on our railway, although I'm not sure if Canada really counts as foreign. It's a country that has ties to England still."

"Where is Canada, Edward?" asked Percy. "Not in—Europe?"

"No, much further away than that. Way over the ocean and just north of the United States."

"Oh! Where Connor is from. He said he was from the United States."

"That's right. Canada is their neighbour."

Percy smiled, satisfied. Edward was always so kind when answering his questions, unlike some of the others, who'd make him feel stupid if they realized he didn't know something. Emily began smiling too, fixated on something Henry had said which had nothing to do with nationality.

"Are they really married, Henry? That's so romantic!"

"What's romantic about it? A lot of humans are married," said Gordon.

"But they don't usually work together on a railway," Emily pointed out. "Oh, they must just love it, if they want to be together all day in an engine cab. I bet they'll be the best crew ever! You're so lucky, Henry."

"Or they'll be arguing constantly and won't pay attention to what they're supposed to be doing," the big blue Pacific countered. "I don't know how you can make such an assumption, Emily. You haven't even seen them."

"But I have," Henry snapped, "and they'll be fine."

The uncommon vehemence in his tone brought another temporary halt to the conversation. Henry rarely contradicted anybody, let alone Gordon. For him, it was the equivalent of an angry shout. What they didn't know was that Henry was the most surprised of them all. He had no idea why he'd suddenly felt the need to defend a crew he'd known for less than a day.

"Well, I suppose," Gordon conceded, after raising his brows and regarding his shed-mate in a speculative way for a moment. "You're the one they were driving, after all. I still don't know why you had to rush up my hill like that at the exact same time I came by with the express. Are you certain it wasn't planned?"

"I don't see how. My new driver was the one who wanted a safe place to run me at full speed and asked to go out on the mainline. I'm sure she didn't know your schedule. When we first heard your whistle, I remember she asked if it'd be safe to continue and my old driver said yes, it was you with the express train and you'd be on the fast track, so…" He ground to a halt, suddenly remembering something else. "Oh," he added, looking a little stricken.

"Oh what, Henry?" asked Thomas.

"My—my new fireman. He said something about…competition."

Gordon snorted. "The same gentleman who saw fit to scream out of your cab window, I presume. I knew it."

"So you _were_ racing!" Thomas exclaimed.

"I didn't mean to! Maybe… I couldn't refuse my driver's commands!"

"Of course you could! You've done it already often enough. Remember that business with the chicken pox? You almost ran backwards into James, and while pulling coaches at that! And of course there was your infamous tunnel stunt."

"That was different," Henry protested, flushing with mingled embarrassment and hurt. Why oh why did Gordon always have to bring up his past transgressions? "It's not as though I meant to disobey," he added, getting angrier.

"You still never said who won the race," Thomas said, butting in again, although this time it was for a rather more calculated reason. He could see that Henry was struggling with Gordon's accusations and wanted to give him a possible out. "Now that we've established that it was an actual real race and all, I mean."

Gordon shifted his attention onto the eager little tank engine, thoroughly annoyed and a tad dismayed. "Nobody cares about that," he snapped. "And it wasn't a _proper_ race. After all, I was pulling coaches and—"

"I want to know!" Percy piped up, interrupting in turn.

"And me!" said Emily. She eyed Henry, who was looking about as miffed as ever she'd seen him. He'd also begun positively glaring at Gordon—also great to see. "Did _you_ win, Henry?"

Gordon's dismay morphed into instant alarm.

"Now see here—"

"I _did_ win!" Henry exploded. "I flew past him up to the top of the hill like he was standing still. And then, further on, we had to pull into a siding and wait until he caught up and went by us."

"Ha ha! I knew it!" Thomas crowed.

"Oh wow! Way to go, Henry."

"Yes, well done," said Edward. In truth, he didn't care much about racing or competition in general, but Gordon's occasional predilection to carry things too far when teasing or harassing the other engines always put Edward off; he despised cruelty and trying to ridicule someone for their fears was very cruel in his logbook. It wouldn't hurt for Gordon to be on the receiving end for a change.

Henry was still breathing hard after his uncharacteristic outburst. He looked shocked, but also relieved and pleased with himself. Gordon, by contrast, appeared almost apoplectic. Gathering his thoughts for a vicious retort, no doubt…

"Of course, there's no knowing how fast Henry really is," Edward went on, trying to sound as casual as possible. "He's never been fully trialed. And no one's ever asked him for any real speed, until, it seems, today. It's possible that Henry's always been faster than you, Gordon. We've just never had a chance to see it."

His offhand comments had exactly the effect he'd hoped for. Gordon gaped at him for a moment, then detonated in a verbal explosion all his own.

"That is absolutely preposterous! I am a Pacific! Henry is a Stanier." He couldn't prevent his lip from curling up in an affected, sneering manner when he said 'Stanier'. "He's incapable of outperforming me, most especially not when it comes to matters of speed. It's technically impossible."

"Ah, but Henry's not a _pure_ Stanier, is he now? He started out as something quite different, a blend of two very creditable, but unrelated types. Something of both of them no doubt still remains within Henry's design, which makes him a very unique hybrid." Edward paused to aim a smile at the engine under discussion, who was listening in with wide-eyed surprise and keen interest. "I've heard humans speak about a thing called hybrid vigour. It happens when they mate different breeds of cattle or hogs or chickens together. The offspring are often a big improvement over either parent and it's all because they're a mix of two breeds…hybrids. Maybe it's the same with engines. Maybe the fact that Henry's a blend of _three_ different types now gives him an extra special dose of hybrid vigour that lets him perform way past his originating specs. Right now we just…don't…know. Like I said, Henry's never been trialed to establish his maximum limits…have you, Henry?"

"Nooo, not really," Henry said slowly. "I was tested, of course, when they first fired me up, and again after I was rebuilt at Crewe. But they only ran me up so far, like they wanted me to meet certain requirements and no more." He looked at Gordon, then added, rather defiantly, "I could have gone a lot faster. Especially after Crewe."

"Well, there you go. Better watch yourself, Gordon. Should you two ever be allowed to race for real, you might wind up having to amend your favourite catchphrase from 'fastest and best' to 'one of the fastest and still pretty good'."

The other engines laughed uproariously, aside from Gordon, of course, who looked about ready to kill. "What utter nonsense!" he managed to sputter out at last, but there was a solid streak of doubt undermining his murderous glare and words, which was apparent to all. The levity and support from his friends brought out Henry's snarky side.

"Don't worry, Gordon," he said. "I won't try and beat you again. Not unless my driver wants me to, that is. And if she does, then I can't very well _disobey_, now can I?"

Thomas was still giggling. "Oh dear," he added. "What if Henry's new crew actually enjoys racing, like mine does? That'd certainly liven up the rails."

"No it won't," Gordon countered, sounding very huffy indeed. "Sir Topham Hatt doesn't approve of racing. It's not going to happen."

"Maybe not on the mainline, when we're working. But hasn't the Earl, Sir Robert Norramby, been talking with Sir Topham about having races…?"

"Oh. Oh! That's right!" James said eagerly. "I was right there when he first said it too—you remember, Gordon? He wants to have a classic engine race every year once he opens his railway museum."

"He was talking about Stephen and Glynn!"

"But there could be more races. He could invite Flying Scotsman, and others."

Gordon now looked appalled. The others looked delighted, their eyes sparkling with shared excitement. Henry even laughed aloud, completely caught up by the exhilaration of it all.

"I'd race Flying Scotsman! Even if I couldn't win, it'd be an honour, just to try."

"That's the spirit, Henry!" Emily cried. "I'd have a go too, if I were faster. It'd be so much fun."

"Yes, it would be," agreed Edward. "And even coming in second, what an accomplishment!"

"Second!? What—! _Who_ are you talking about? Henry? Henry can't compete against Flying Scotsman!"

"Why not? He just beat you. You're Scotsman's brother."

"He didn't _beat_ me! It wasn't— You can't-can't—" And at that point Gordon became so upset that he literally stuttered to a stop. He couldn't believe how the conversation had gone and how his intention to chew Henry out for his disrespect had backfired so miserably. Worst of all, the seed of doubt which Edward had planted was growing by leaps and bounds. Gordon expressed his disgust with it all by retreating into the back of his berth and sulking there for the remainder of the evening, grumbling and groaning to himself until fatigue overcame him and he drifted off to sleep. The last thing he remembered thinking was that no way, no how, would he ever allow Henry to get the drop on him again. Just in case.

Henry, by contrast, slept very happily and well. The other engines' ready acceptance of his unusual new crew and the way they'd rallied with him against Gordon had been surprising and welcome. He'd been certain that he'd be badly teased, yet all they'd expressed was genuine interest and curiosity. And then there'd been Edward with his intriguing speculations about Henry's true limits…well! it had certainly put Gordon in his place and on notice. The last thing Henry thought about before he fell asleep was whether Edward's theory could possibly be true—_could _he match Gordon's speed if he really tried? Henry had always accepted that he was a mixed-traffic sort of engine, good at doing almost any job asked of him, but not excelling at anything in particular compared to the more specialized types, such as Gordon and his kin. If hybrid vigour were a real thing applicable to engines as well as animals, however…

The Stanier Black Five, who was neither black nor a hundred percent true Stanier if recent rumours were to be believed, nodded off at that point and peace descended upon the shed. Temporary peace.

to be continued…


	2. Part Two

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Two

Henry normally woke up gradually, coming back to life every morning to the welcome warmth of a fire already ablaze in his firebox and the water in his boiler already well-heated and poised to start bubbling. He'd feel the presence of his driver or fireman in his cab, tending to his pressures, and the gentle touches of the other crewman as he made his way around Henry's body, checking on his wheels, his lights, the connection between his engine self and tender, all the parts that needed to be in tip-top shape for safe nighttime driving. That was the routine he'd known for years and its very familiarity and predictability always afforded him comfort. Until today. On this pre-dawn morning, Henry's eyes popped wide open long before his crew, either the old or the new, showed up. He was already wide awake when the humans finally came for him, all four of them together, speaking very softly amongst themselves so as not to wake any of the other, still sleeping engines.

Henry's old driver saw at once that his loco was already awake, contrary to his usual habit, and smiled to himself, a little sadly. Anxious, he thought. Anxious and nervous. He hoped Henry would comport himself well for it was going to be their last morning together and he wanted to part on good terms and with good memories.

Getting Henry's fire going was the first priority and the engine was glad to feel that Mister Doyon, his new fireman, went about the task as well as did his old one and spread the initial pile of coal out into a nice even layer once the fuel had caught and was burning well so there wouldn't be an uncomfortable and damaging hot spot, just a soothing blanket of heat from one end of the floor of his firebox to the other. He also felt him tap the gauge monitoring his water level and that was also a small comfort for an engine, to know that his fireman was prepared to take care to keep his tubes well submerged. Henry started to relax. He knew he had issues when it came to the functioning of his firebox and always would, for he'd once been considered a bad steamer, a failing which had hampered him so much at times that his very existence had been in jeopardy. A major refit had supposedly solved all his problems, yet still he worried. The slightest little dip in his energy output, the merest hint of a cough or a spark wafting from his funnel…it always reminded him of the bad early days and the old dread would creep over him, making him feel faint and weak even when he was nothing of the sort. A good fireman, though…it helped. Henry best liked the ones who could bring up his steam quickly and strongly, so that the time he spent waiting to return to useful life was cut to a minimum.

Pierre Doyon was one of the good ones. Henry could soon sense the water in his boiler beginning to fizz and pop, the last stage before it switched over to a vigorous boil. And here came his new driver, trailed after by his old one…she was doing his walkaround and listening to the tips being given her by the other human. When she got to his front end, she caught Henry looking at her and gave him a brief, brilliant smile as she fingered his buffers and coupling, although she didn't say anything. Henry managed a tiny smile in return before losing his nerve and casting his gaze elsewhere. He knew he was still being silly, but was also beginning to realize that she didn't seem to mind his being bashful and that notion was…pleasant.

Steam began to waft out about his undercarriage, moistly caressing his wheels. The two drivers climbed aboard and he felt the soft little hands of the new one take hold of his controls, getting set to move him out. Henry responded instantly to his cues, eager to redeem himself. He was still concerned about what had happened early on during the day before and was determined to make up for his poor initial behaviour.

The first thing they did was that Henry's old driver directed the new one as to where to best stop to take on the new day's first load of fresh coal. Henry also needed a little water. His old driver typically only watered him and took on fuel at the end of his working day if Henry was really low in either department. The engine listened in as the humans discussed the coal situation on Sodor in general.

"So this is the best place to get coal, the Tidmouth depot?" he overheard his new driver ask.

"I think it's one of the best. They go through a lot of it here since it's the store nearest the sheds so it's pretty much guaranteed to be fresh. Also usually good quality. If it isn't, somebody'll show the effects of a bad batch pretty quickly."

"Ah. Makes sense."

"We also used to keep Henry's special anthracite here. They built a three-sided bin for it right there in that flat spot. A bit of a pain having to pitch it aboard by hand, bucketful by bucketful, but it did the trick until his refit."

"That was the big rebuild he had at Crewe, right?"

"Yes. Initially he was just sent there for repairs after a bad accident he had. But then Sir Topham Hatt decided they might as well address the firebox issue too while they had Henry onsite and already torn apart, so… All worked out for the best in the end, really. He does fine with regular coal now."

Henry stopped listening in at that point and tried to ignore the rest of the humans' conversation. He still had bad memories of what had happened to send him off to Crewe and of the panic and fright he'd felt while waiting there for the verdict of whether he was worth rebuilding at all.

The humans finished with his refueling and watering and his new driver sent him on. He chuffed forward, happy to be finally getting down to business and for the opportunity to show his new crew just how useful and obedient he could be.

Henry's usual routine first job of the day, pulling The Flying Kipper, always departed from the Brendam Docks nowadays which necessitated a good hour's worth of steaming before they'd even arrive at their job site. As usual, they used the mainlines and then the branch line usually managed by Edward to get to their destination. It was almost always a quiet, pleasant trip, with barely ever a soul to be seen as they travelled serenely through the dark, although there was always a smattering of lights visible in some of the houses' windows in the several villages they chuffed through en route, the mark of similar early risers such as themselves getting set to go off to work. Then Brendam itself would come into view and then the docks, which were always ablaze, often throughout the night depending on how much ships' traffic was coming through. Henry would encounter a personal paradox then—he still loved pulling The Flying Kipper despite the very real grief doing so had once caused him. Part of it was the surprise of finding out what he'd be asked to take, for The Kipper's composition was always varying. Even the fish vans that gave the train its name weren't always a given, and on those occasions, when the fishing was slow, a few extra trucks or flatbeds full of assorted goods were usually added to the Kipper instead. Whatever it was Henry wound up pulling, it was always weighted well within his capacity and he would always feel strong and able as he ferried his express through the cool, damp, predawn hours all the way up the mainlines to Vicarstown and sometimes beyond. After that, it was usually back to Knapford to pick up the orders for his next job and that part of it was good too, for his driver would sometimes let him run a bit to make up time as long as the traffic on the rails wasn't too heavy. Henry hoped that his new driver would let him run sometimes too. He knew he was quite speedy as big tender engines went, but rarely got the chance to demonstrate it since he did so much goods work.

Salty, the diesel shunter, was just adding the brake van to Henry's train as he pulled into the dockyard proper, and the two engines smiled and greeted each other as Henry passed by on his way to the Kipper's front end. There was no need to keep their voices down either. Everyone at the dockyard was always wide awake long before dawn every day. Henry called a greeting up at Cranky the crane too, who growled back his usual perfunctory acknowledgement in response. He'd just unloaded a whole four vans' worth of fish for the Kipper and was already fed up with having to put up with so much reek first thing in the morning.

Denise, the new driver, switched Henry over onto the track with his train and then backed him very slowly until he made contact with the first truck. Henry could tell that she was still feeling her way with his handling and that was fine with him. He was much happier with new drivers who were cautious and careful than those who got impatient and rushed him through his everyday work, something which always made him nervous. Both firemen suddenly hopped down out of his cab as he was being coupled up and Henry heard the men talking just behind his tender to some of the dock workers. Making introductions and new friends, Henry guessed. He knew that humans were social creatures…just as social as engines.

The two firemen got back aboard and they soon moved out. There were two quick ways they could go then, retrace their route until they reached the mainlines again or cut over through Suddery and then north on the Loop to get onto the mainlines just past Maron. Henry overheard his old driver direct his new one to use the Loop route. He also overheard him telling her that one could also turn south onto the Loop line and that it would likewise eventually hook up with the mainlines much further along and make for a very nice, even more scenic drive, but that such would be wasted in the dark, not to mention that it would add a good deal of time to their journey…it was better to get back onto the mainline as fast as possible where they could travel more safely at speed. Henry found himself internally nodding along in agreement as he continued to listen in. He preferred the mainlines himself for similar reasons. And they were always the best maintained tracks and thus the smoothest ones to run on, he thought.

The eastern horizon was getting quite bright by the time they did reach the mainlines again and the new people inside Henry's cab could finally actually see some of the sights his old driver had been trying to point out. Before that, they'd begun making a bit of a game out of it, with Henry's old driver or fireman claiming that they were just now passing Sodor's main airport or that there were the ruins of a castle on the hill just off there to the right in the dark, to which his new driver would respond with a cheerful "I'll take your word for it", after which everyone would chuckle. Henry liked it when the humans operating him were chatty and sounded happy. He was always acutely sensitive to the moods of the people around him and always felt safer when their moods were good, for he was unfortunately far more aware than most engines as to how much his very fate depended on their whims.

They got past Cronk and Killdane in good order and after that it was smooth sailing all the way to Crovan's Gate and then on again to Vicarstown, which on this day would be their final destination. The sun came up beautifully while Henry was en route and was shining down on them when they finally eased to a stop at a goods platform in the yard just off the canopied passenger station. "What a nice run!" Denise exclaimed as she set Henry's brakes, then ran a hand over the outward side of his cab just beneath her window and added, "Good boy. Always in control and I don't believe I heard a single off beat the whole way. Good job, Henry."

The green engine felt himself starting to flush again. He didn't know why her praise affected him so much. His old driver patted him and praised him too sometimes, which was always very enjoyable, but it never made him flush. He supposed he still hadn't gotten used to her being a woman. Her hand petting him just felt…different, although he was at a loss to explain even to himself exactly what that difference was.

A shunter came to take Henry's train away and the two drivers went off to tend to the paperwork generated by his delivery. Even his two firemen hopped out and left. There were plenty of rail workers about by now who could look after Henry and he was accustomed to having a break at this point while his crew had their own short rest. He was still feeling very good about how his new driver had acknowledged his work. It boded well for the future of their entire relationship and he was starting to think that changing crews might be good for him in general.

When they returned to Knapford later on in the morning, Henry's new driver let him run to make up time just like his old driver did, and the big green Black Five arrived at the main station in fine form and with a great big smile on his face…just because.

Sir Topham Hatt was glad to see that Henry was in good spirits when he came out to oversee the loco's official crew changeover. He'd still been a touch concerned about Henry's over-the-top reaction when he'd first introduced him to the Doyons the day before and was relieved by his people's assurance that the engine had already gotten over it.

"He's still being a bit timid of you-know-who, but that's just our Henry being Henry…aren't you, old boy?" the engine's old driver said, running a hand fondly over the familiar red edge of his running board. His old fireman stepped forward to pat him too. Despite himself, Henry felt himself blushing yet again—how embarrassing!—and that thought, of course, just made his cheeks flush more than ever.

"Thanks for being my crew for so long," he said shyly to the two men.

"Oh, yer not quite rid of us yet," his old fireman said. "You'll still see us most every evening back in the sheds an' y' never know…we might fill in as yer relief crew now and then."

The Fat Controller smiled happily. He could tell that Henry was indeed fine now that he'd had a little time to get used to the changes and that he was just being emotional.

"That's exactly right, Henry," he said to his engine. "It's not as if your old crew is leaving forever. Edward's the one who's truly losing his crew and so is the North Western Railway. They'll be retiring soon."

Henry watched a round of hand-shaking go on after that and suddenly his old crew was gone, out of his field of vision. Sir Topham Hatt walked off as well. The only humans left in front of him on the platform were the two newbies.

The man, Pierre, suddenly clapped a hand against Henry's running board where the other two men had been petting him. "Ha haa, you are ours now, Henri! We can do w'at we want wid you now, eh?" he crowed.

Henry regarded him with wide eyes. "Oh! Yes. Ha. Of course." He laughed a little, sure that the man was just joking. He hoped.

"He's just kidding with you, Henry," Denise confirmed. "Pierre's going to stay with you while I go off toooo….dispatch. Pick up new orders from dispatch. Now where the heck was that…?"

She wandered off in turn, down the platform. Pierre left too, but only to climb up and into Henry's cab. He started tending to his fire, bringing the locomotive's pressures up again.

Denise soon came back with a big grin on her face.

"Well, they gave us an easy one. Right back to the same docks to pick up some parts for the steamworks at Crovan's Gate. Then the steamworks guys'll have a load for us to take to some scrap yard near that Wellsworth place where we turned off onto that branch line and that'll be it for the day. No hurry on any of it, the dispatcher said. Just have it done by the end of the workday and they'll be happy."

"Ah. Dis'll be good. We learn de routes in the daytime now. We should take dat Loop route de long way dis time if we don't need to 'urry."

"Good idea! Maybe we'll even see that castle they claimed was up on that hill."

Henry, who'd been listening in with interest, was pleased, both for his and his new crew's sake. Two more easy jobs by the sounds of it and then they'd be free to go home. Maybe they'd talk to him a little more once they got him back to his berth in Tidmouth. He was becoming increasingly curious about them and hoped they'd tell him a little about the country they'd come from and the sorts of engines that worked there.

The trip to pick up their new freight and take it up to the Sodor Steamworks went very well. While the two flatbeds he'd brought up were being uncoupled inside the steamworks building, his crew climbed out to introduce themselves to the fitters present and chat awhile. Shortly afterwards, his new driver came around in front of him and presented him with a welcome proposition.

"You okay with spending the next hour or so here, Henry? Some of the folks here want to take us along for lunch and show us where the good eats are."

"Oh! All…all right."

"Great!"

To add to his surprise, she then climbed back aboard to reposition him out on the transfer table and had him moved down to the furthest empty berth where she backed him fully inside the building.

"There," she said with satisfaction as she disembarked yet again. "Nice and safe and dry if it rains."

Henry, surprised anew, eyed what he could see of the sky. It _had_ gotten rather cloudy. "It's going to rain?" he exclaimed.

"Maybe. We noticed some buildups off to the west earlier which look to be coming this way. Just showers, if it does happen. Either way, at least you'll be dry."

"Oh. Well…thank you…ma'am."

Denise grinned.

"See you later, Henry," she said, and then she was gone, leaving her loco to consider the odds as to whether it would rain or not. Actually, just the fact that she'd gone to the trouble of getting him under cover at all had kicked off a lot more contemplation on the engine's part than she could have possibly imagined; Henry was now thinking that his former crew must have told his new crew all about how he disliked rain in general and that further meant that they'd also likely talked about his once refusing to leave the rail tunnel which bore his name and all because he didn't like to get rained on. Of course there was far more to it than that, but Henry had yet to meet anyone who really understood. He sometimes thought that 'the tunnel incident', as he'd come to name it in his own mind, would follow him throughout the remainder of his existence and that even the people at the smelter's yard would know about it and remark on it just before they took up the blowtorches with which they would end his life.

Luckily, Victor and Kevin came by before Henry could get too immersed in his worrying and were able to distract him by settling in for a heavy-duty round of exchanging all the latest engine gossip. It did rain too, a heavy shower that pounded hard on the canopy roof above their heads halfway through Henry's visit, then it cleared again just before Henry's crew came back from their own social session and break. Henry was quite thoughtful as he was directed through the maneuvers to pick up his last job of the day, another flatbed this time laden with worn out parts fit only for recycling as scrap metal. It had been quite nice of his crew to want to keep him dry, and for good reason as it turned out, and they hadn't teased him about it either—they'd just made it about his comfort.

Their trip home after that, with a quick detour to drop off their flatbed, proved entirely uneventful and pleasant. The only thing that Henry didn't like about it was that his new crew began conversing between themselves in some foreign language he couldn't understand, but then he reminded himself that he ought not to be eavesdropping anyway and his dislike faded into fleeting guilt. He supposed that they'd be speaking English if he were meant to listen in or they'd just address him directly, just as Denise in particular already had.

And sure enough… They'd no sooner gotten back on the mainlines than his driver was calling to him and quizzing him about the washdowns available on the Island.

"Where's the one you like best, Henry?" she asked.

"Um, the one outside Knapford?"

His hesitant answer amused her. He clearly wasn't used to being asked to offer opinions, at least not by humans. Well, that would change… "Knapford it is," she decided. "Let us know when we're getting close, Henry!"

The washdown in question, when they chuffed up, was empty and they were able to scoot right in. The Doyons both hopped out for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day to chat with the two men manning the washdown.

"He's not really that dirty. We mainly just stopped to say hi and get used to the routine," Denise said.

"Gotcher," the washdown man manning the hose replied, grinning back a toothy grin. "Just a quick rinse and we'll save the soap. Gettin' yer bearings yet? Must seem a pretty small railway compared to whatcher used to."

"We like it so far. Lots to see, small or not."

"Yeah, that's true. Well, yer got yourselves a good engine to go sightseein'. How come y' wound up wit Henry?"

"Just good timing, really. We wrote and asked if there were any openings for engine crews just as Edward's crew put in their intention to retire."

"Ah. An' the boss wanted to keep it local for Edward. Well, I can see that. Edward's a good fellow. We've been washing him fer years, same as Henry."

They chattered on while the man who was talking kept on spritzing and the other workman scrubbed away at the sides of Henry's tender. Henry waited patiently, listening in again now that he could understand what was being said. He agreed that he hadn't done anything that had gotten him all that dirty, but if the humans wanted to clean him off anyway that was fine by him.

Later, just before they reached the Tidmouth sheds, his new driver pulled Henry to a stop one last time to top off his coal and watcr at the stores where they'd fueled up that morning before dawn, and that was it—he was finally done. As usual, Henry was the first engine to return to the roundhouse and he backed into his berth with an especial sense of relief that afternoon, his relief being all about having discovered that his new crew, though odd, were entirely competent and really quite nice as humans went after all.

Then he found out that although he was done for the day, his crew was not yet quite done with him. They did go off for a while and then came right back with a bunch of buckets, some full of utensils, others full of hot water and suds. Pierre fetched a short wooden ladder and put some of the buckets up on the downward stepped extension of Henry's running board just before his face and carried some of the others up with him when he climbed up himself and walked back towards his cab. Denise climbed up after him and started fiddling with the buckets that had been left by Henry's face. He regarded her with considerable trepidation, his eyes wide, especially after she swished a hand around in the suds bucket and began eyeing him back in a speculative way.

Denise saw at once, of course, that her engine had become all of a sudden nervous and was quick to try and find out why.

"Did your other crews wash your face by hand much, Henry?" she asked him in a pleasant, casual tone.

"Uh…sometimes," he replied, sounding rather hesitant. "When it got really dirty and they had to."

"I see. Well, Pierre and I are a little different. We like to give our engines a good grooming when we're done working just about every day, whether you guys need it or not. We just find it a nice relaxing way to finish up and Pierre's got a thing about having the shiniest engine in the shed. You good with that, Henry?"

"Oh! Um…" Now his hesitancy was turning into outright evasion. If he could have, Denise thought, the big green engine would have begun to squirm. "I'm not…sure. I'm not used to it."

"To getting your face washed?"

She regarded him with interest. He really did seem rather upset at the notion of having his face cleaned up and she had a sneaking suspicion as to why.

"Tell you what, Henry," she continued on, as sweetly as possible. "Why don't we try it my way just this once and if you don't like it, we can go back to what you're used to. That's fair, don't you think? And the decision afterwards'll be all yours."

Henry breathed hard as he considered her proposal. It did seem rather fair, and in any case, he shouldn't be trying to tell one of the humans, any human, what to do. He capitulated as soon as that latter thought crossed his mind. He'd gotten himself into a lot of trouble once long ago when he'd inadvertently defied his masters and the memory of it still smarted at times.

"Okay," Henry agreed, weakly.

His new driver swung into action. Denise was pretty small as adult humans went, and Henry had a large face. She had to use a little wooden footstool at first to get up high enough to reach the top of the junction between his facial plate and smokebox. Henry continued to breathe hard as she leaned briefly against him out of sheer necessity, inspecting the transition between pure metal and living alloy, making sure his funnel looked okay. It felt weird to have a human's body pressing on his face. He still had his safeguards up so the surface of his faux skin was nowhere near as sensitive as it could be, but he could feel her nonetheless, the same as he could feel his fireman's hands on his body way back near his cab. The man seemed to be rubbing him down and that was something Henry did like, to have the fine gloss on his paintjob brought up. He wasn't at all sure yet what the woman had planned for him, though, and thus remained tense while she finished her brief inspection and then retrieved something out of the water buckets before getting down to business.

Henry squeezed his eyes tightly shut as soon as Denise raised a hand to his forehead. He _hated_ getting soapy water in his eyes, absolutely hated it. It hurt and made him tear up and it always took forever afterwards to blink away the sting. But he couldn't feel any water, just something pleasantly hot and soft and damp stroking over his face well above his brows. He cracked the lids of his eyes apart and watched his driver step down and dip what looked to be a washcloth and a sponge into the buckets, then she got back up on her footstool and wiped the very top of his face again, using both hands in tandem. Henry's relief was immediate and enormous. This was nothing like having his body washed, with water splashing and trickling down everywhere. She was being very careful and kind with him and not letting a single stray droplet get away from her to aggravate him. He closed his eyes again, this time with a degree of pleasure instead of apprehension. The warmth and gentle stroking was very soothing. He relaxed completely, dropping his safeguards, enjoying the sensations of having his face tended to and his paintwork being rubbed down simultaneously.

When she was done cleaning him, Denise dried his face with a towel, then gave him a final wipe down with a shammy impregnated with a little oil. Henry blinked and pursed his lips afterwards, liking how supple-feeling it had left the surface of his amorphous alloy visage.

Denise stood back as far as she could, smiling.

"Well? Shall we keep on doing that from now on, Henry?"

He looked at her gratefully. "Yes, ma'am."

Still bashful, but at least he could meet her eyes now and he'd learned to trust her touching him in about as intimate a fashion as it got with engines. It was a good bit of progress, she thought.

"All right then. We will. I'm going to help Pierre finish polishing you up now, then we'll do your running board and your cab and that should be about it, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you."

"You're very welcome, Henry."

Denise climbed down to fetch more water, then came back and joined her husband up on the big engine's long running board. They chatted together in French as they worked on so as not to embarrass their mechanical charge.

"So, he succumbed to your magic fingers, did he?" Pierre asked, grinning.

"Of course he did," Denise joshed back. "My gosh, he's shy! We've never had a really shy one, have we?"

"What do you expect? You're so intimidating."

"Oh, right. All hundred and ten pounds of me versus…what? Seventy plus tons? Silly thing."

They both chuckled. "It's cute," said Pierre. "Nice gentle fellow… He's easy for you to drive, isn't he?"

"So far."

"Probably afraid you'll beat him if he disobeys."

That earned him a playful whack on one forearm. They never tired of teasing each other.

Once done with the remainder of their cleanup, the two gathered up and stored their supplies, swung past Henry's face to wish him goodnight, then strode off across the individual tracks to get to their car. Henry watched them for as long as he could. He was feeling very good, cared for and tidy, and all his initial reservations and nervousness over acquiring a new crew had vanished entirely. Then Emily showed up.

"Oh no. Was that them?" she cried, spotting the departing car. She got herself turned around and backed into the berth next to Henry. "I missed them!"

"Heh, sorry, Emily. Next time maybe."

The dark green Stirling eyed her friend. Henry always wore his emotions on his sleeve, as the humans said, and he looked relaxed and happy. She smiled, pleased for him, and briefly went quiet while her own crew finished up with her and departed, then resumed their conversation.

"You like them, don't you?" she said.

"Yeah, I do. And I think they like me too. They got me watered and my tender filled up for tomorrow already and got me a really nice washdown, then cleaned me up some more when we got back to the shed."

"I thought you were looking kind of shiny."

"That's my new fireman. He rubbed me down and I think he put on some new polish…"

Emily listened to him chatter on, more pleased for him than ever. She'd been afraid that the stress of acquiring a new crew would kick Henry's tendency to worry into overdrive, but instead he appeared energized by the change…surprising, really. She was far more used to hearing him complain than enthuse. Yet here he was, speaking excitedly about his first full day with the important new humans in his life.

"Wow, Henry, it sounds like you're really getting along well already."

"I think so, heh, yes. They talk to me a lot more than my old crew did."

"My crew talks to me a lot too. Oh, I hope they meet soon, our crews. I bet they'd get along really well."

"I think they would too."

They sank into a companionable silence, perfectly comfortable with each other. Emily was actually Henry's favorite engine friend, even though she did tend to boss him around at times. He never minded. He knew she only did it because she cared about him and wanted the best for him, unlike Gordon, whose own bossiness was all about trying to make himself appear superior.

A rare flash of insight widened Henry's eyes for a few seconds. He didn't mind when Emily tried to tell him what to do and now here he was with a human female driver in his life whose job it was to tell him what to do and he didn't mind that either. In fact, he was already getting to kind of like it. He blinked and repressed a little snort of amusement over his own silly behavior, wondering what it said about him that he liked having females in general tell him what to do.

Percy soon showed up and backed into his berth, and shortly afterwards Thomas and Edward likewise came in and retired for the day. Edward's usual crew was still aboard. By now it had become common knowledge amongst the engines that Edward's current driver and fireman were about to retire and that Henry's former crew were the ones who'd be taking over the old K2. According to Edward, the two men would work with him for only another week or so while Henry's former driver and fireman were on holidays, then they'd come back and take over and Edward's two old human friends could finally retire. Henry wondered what that would be like, for humans to retire. Not like an engine's being retired to static display, surely, but there might be some shared frustrations…

Gordon and James were the last two engines to come in that evening, and whereas James was in a jovial, chatty mood, Gordon was in far too much of a snit to greet anyone. Rumour was that he'd been badly delayed early on by a stubborn herd of cows on the track and that his morning express run had arrived late enough in Vicarstown to generate numerous complaints. Not that it had in any way been Gordon's fault, but he'd still taken it personally. He even aimed a nasty glare at Henry and then Edward as he backed in, which made Henry sigh. Gordon always took forever to get over any slights, no matter whether they were real or just imagined.

"Still with us and undamaged, I see," Gordon remarked as soon as his crew was gone, looking Henry over and scowling. "I half expected to hear that you'd derailed."

"Why?" Emily spoke up sharply. "Because you don't think a woman can drive well?"

"No. Because I think his new crew is speed-obsessed," he countered. "They'll get Henry into trouble, mark my words."

"Huh! You're one to talk, ol' fastest and best," said James, and he and Gordon squabbled on for a while after that as only James and Gordon could squabble. Henry just listened. He was somewhat relieved that Gordon had chosen to redirect his ire more at his new crew than himself and even more so relieved that they weren't around to hear themselves being bad-mouthed. But then Gordon was almost always careful and polite when it came to interacting with humans…Henry did have to give him credit for that. He might not be the friendliest engine, but he did normally make an effort to comport himself well when around them.

Henry went to sleep later on still feeling very good about the way his day had gone and how his relationship with his new crew was shaping up. In the end, that was really the only opinion that mattered, what Henry himself thought of the new people in his cab, and at the moment, his thoughts were still all positive.

to be continued...


	3. Part Three

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Three

The good times for Henry continued. He quickly learned that he could count on his new crew to handle him kindly and well, and the Doyons in turn discovered that their big green engine could indeed uphold the reputation of the Stanier model he now resembled as to being hard-working and reliable. But they also knew that such had not always been the case. Thanks to several lengthy talks with people who'd known Henry for a long time, they understood that he'd had a poor start in life and that the flaws inherent in his early design had caused frequent problems which had left their mark. Henry was still lacking in confidence, forever afraid that he might succumb to one of his old woes after all, and his faith in his own strength and fitness was tenuous at best and vacillated constantly. It also made him uncommonly sensitive to criticism, but that was something the Doyons had determined even before they got his backstory. They'd been able to tell almost at once that Henry was one of those engines inclined to wilt under a single harsh word or glance and they were actually quite happy to work with his personality type. It made him a safe loco to spoil rotten and coax along rather than order about, and that suited both Doyons just fine for neither of them enjoyed having to get tough with the living machines they loved so dearly.

As for Henry, he mostly appreciated all the extra attention his intriguing new crew lavished on him, although it also sometimes puzzled him. Their habit of asking him so many questions, for instance… Both his driver and fireman thought nothing of seeking his opinion on which routes were best suited to get from one place to another or asking him about the locations of sidings and other amenities, especially when it came to the lesser, less travelled lines. Humans usually didn't ask him about such things, although he had to admit to himself that he really liked being able to answer their queries. It just made him feel more useful, a little more of a good partner in their daily endevours, and if there was one thing a loco needed to feel complete, it was to be useful. Still, the whole business struck him as odd enough that Henry spoke to his friend Emily about it and, as usual, she came through at once with an explanation which should have been glaringly obvious.

"Well of course they're asking you a lot of questions, Henry," she'd said. "I mean, who else can they ask if you're en route? It's not like they have much experience yet driving on Sodor."

"Ohhhh," Henry replied, sounding disappointed, although his disappointment was entirely with himself. "You're right, Emily. I just…I didn't think… I mean, they both drive really well."

The dark green Stirling giggled a little. "Sure. Back in Canada they did, maybe. It doesn't mean they know our railway." She smiled at Henry, who was looking rather sheepish at the moment. "I hope you're helping them out!" she added.

"I'm trying…"

In retrospect, it was still a very silly lapse on Henry's part, he'd thought, not to have considered that Sodor was still unfamiliar territory for his crew. It made clear too that in some ways he had yet to accept that he now carried a crew of a very different colour in his cab. He was still stuck on having always been assigned the older, more experienced local drivers and firemen available, people who'd worked their way up the ranks and who were long past needing to consult their locomotive about the layout of the tracks they were using.

His chat with Emily gave him something else to think about. She'd also pointed out that Henry should feel very lucky insofar as he was one of the few engines around whose crew had no need to rush off after work to get home to their families…his new fireman and driver _were _each other's family, which was likely why they felt free to linger around after bringing him back to the Tidmouth sheds every day and take their time getting him tidied up and settled. Henry could recall only one other human who used to spend a lot of similar extra time with him and it had happened long ago, back when Henry still had his original body. His dicey ability to build up any useful steam had gotten even worse once he'd been returned to service after being confined for a lengthy period within the railway tunnel which bore his name and a fireman new to him had begun coming over on occasion to help out. The fireman was very old and supposedly retired from driving, yet he still liked firing up an engine now and then. He was also very experienced and had a knack for working with finicky engines, and he liked working with Henry. Once Henry's workday was over, the old fireman would even stay to help put him up for the night and then laboriously climb up onto Henry's running board so he could wash the loco's face by himself. He'd always done it just like the Doyons did, using wrung-out cloths and sponges to gently wipe the alloy surfaces clean and being especially mindful of Henry's eyes. Sadly, Henry could not remember ever once thanking the man for his kindness and consideration. He'd still been in a sorry state and rather shy of people in general after his severe punishment back then and probably hadn't been up for saying much. All he could do now was hope that the fact that he'd always relaxed and trustingly closed his eyes for the old fireman's ministrations had somehow expressed his gratefulness without the need for words. Then, one day, the old fireman had simply stopped coming and Henry had never seen him again. His regular crew had luckily learned by then how to work around Henry's assorted ills, but they'd never stayed with him after work any longer than they had to, quite unlike the old fireman and more recently, the Doyons.

The old fireman probably hadn't had anyone waiting for him at home either, Henry now realized as he continued to think over the old memories his talk with Emily had dredged up. He'd been like Denise and Pierre, happy to spend some of his free time with an engine as though that engine were a friend instead of just a machine he used for work. Henry liked the idea of becoming his new crew's friend. His old crew, and indeed just about all his crews before them, had always been good to him, yet he'd always sensed that there was an unspoken divide between them, the divide that stood between master and servant. The Doyons, though…there was less of a barrier there. In fact, Henry got the distinct impression at times that they were going out of their way to demolish it.

The surprising development involving Gordon, for example... Like most of the full-time crews nowadays, the Doyons worked six days a week, whereas Henry typically still did his Kipper run with a driver and fireman off the spares list whenever his regular crew was unavailable. Once that task was done, he'd be brought back to Knapford to check whether any emergency situations requiring an alternate engine had arisen, and if not, he'd be allowed to have his own remainder of the day off and would be returned to his shed to rest and relax. Henry was one of the older engines on the Island, old enough to have begun appreciating such breaks. He also enjoyed the opportunity to doze away a few hours in safe, familiar surroundings by himself in relative peace and quiet.

Several weeks after his crew change, towards the end of one of his partial days off when the other engines began returning to the sheds, he was a little shocked to see not only Gordon's usual driver and fireman disembarking once they'd backed him into his berth, but both Doyons as well, and they were clad in their working uniforms. None of the four humans offered up a word of explanation as they passed right in front of Henry on their way out of the yard, but then Denise turned her head, caught her engine's eye, and offered up an enormous brief grin and a wink. Henry smiled back a little, instantly intrigued. He knew what a wink signified and wondered what secret it was which he and his new driver now shared.

The humans had no sooner gotten into their cars and out of earshot than Gordon himself provided the first clue. "Ha!" he crowed to Henry. "Even your own driver says I'm the fastest engine on Sodor!"

"Oh-h?" Henry responded. He wasn't sure what to think of the other engine's claim. Gordon expanded gleefully on why Henry's crew had just ridden along for most of the day with his own driver and fireman. According to him, the newbies had wanted to know what it was like to handle a proper big passenger engine and to get checked out on his type.

"I may have underestimated your new crew somewhat," Gordon concluded in grand fashion. "It appears that they can recognize and appreciate superior engineering more so than I first thought, even if they are foreigners. And that driver of yours…she's not half bad. She was quite impressed by my performance."

"I'm sure she was," Henry said, and looked over at Edward, who'd come in earlier and who'd been listening in. The smaller blue tender engine was still straight-faced, yet Henry could tell that he was struggling to maintain his current expression and not laugh aloud. Henry wondered if Denise had winked at him too, when she'd passed him.

It took until partway through the next day before Henry finally got the full story. Denise stayed behind to talk to him when they pulled up in Vicarstown for a while after delivering the Kipper train and the first thing she asked about was whether Gordon had claimed that she'd said he was the fastest engine on the Island.

"Yes he did!" Henry replied, impressed himself by her ability to predict Gordon's actions. "Did you…really say that to him, ma'am?"

Denise ducked her head to rub her chin and indulge in a happy chuckle.

"What I actually said, Henry, was that he was the fastest Pacific engine on Sodor."

Her big green loco mulled over her statement for a few seconds before the obvious struck him. "Oh! I get it. He's the only Pacific, so… Ha ha! He thought you meant fastest engine of all, heh."

The woman reached up to pat the edge of Henry's running board. It was good to see him relaxed enough in her presence to laugh.

"Yup," she confirmed. "Gordon's a good fellow. I like him. And I enjoyed the opportunity to drive him. But I do believe he has rather selective hearing when it comes to his wanting to…praise himself, shall we say. Would you agree?"

Henry laughed again. Praise himself! That was Gordon all right. He understood now why his driver had winked at him.

"He does, ma'am," he agreed happily. "Gordon praises himself a lot. He likes being appreciated."

"Don't we all… Well, you rest up a bit now, Henry. I think they've got something here they want us to take back to Brendam, but I have to check in with dispatch to make sure. Pierre and I'll be back soon either way."

And then she was gone, going off to the platforms. Henry looked after her fondly. He knew without asking that he wasn't meant to correct Gordon's erroneous conclusion and he knew that Denise and Pierre wouldn't correct him either, and their small shared subterfuge made Henry feel warm and unusually connected to his new humans. And it had already had positive results. Gordon had dropped his sour attitude towards Henry and Edward as soon as he'd told them about his day out with his augmented crew and had gone on afterwards to be quite pleasant with all his shed-mates that evening as they'd chatted together about their day's adventures. It was a return of the Gordon they all found quite bearable, even likeable. If allowing him to indulge in a bit of self-delusion was what it took to keep him in a good mood, then so be it.

It didn't stop there either. Now that the Doyons had gotten settled and seen to the necessities of relocating to another Commonwealth country, they had a lot more free time and chose to spend even more of it at the Tidmouth sheds. They soon met and befriended all the other regular crews and their engines too. Denise even came up with her own pet names for all the locomotives; Gordon's was 'handsome'. It bemused Henry to no end to witness Gordon's change in attitude towards the two new humans once they began conversing with him routinely after their check ride on him. Denise liked to greet him with some variant of "Hey there, handsome. How are you today?", and Gordon would first briefly close his eyes with pleasure and then reply with an affected formality that was all his: "Oh, I am very well, thank you, Missus Doyon. I hope you are well also." Denise, of course, would at that point reply back that she was likewise just fine, and if it was safe, would give Henry another little secret wink. Gordon never caught on… He became even more smug and happy when Pierre started calling him _bleu grand_, which the engine learned meant 'big blue'. He bragged afterwards that he now had a special Canadian name, never mind that it was actually French.

Henry learned his own pet name on the day that Denise was up on his running board, using an actual scrub brush loaded with hot suds to try and clean up a smear of stubborn tar that had somehow gotten stuck to the engine's left cheek. She'd knocked him by mistake with one of the ends of the brush's wooden backing and exclaimed, "Oh, sorry, sweetheart. Didn't mean to hit you." Henry's own heart, which was made of iron and decidedly not sweet, jogged and skipped a beat in his surprise. He knew exactly what the term meant. It was an endearment which he'd often overheard the humans use amongst themselves, most typically when it was a parent speaking to their offspring or two spouses or lovers exchanging affections. Henry was already accustomed to hearing many of his handlers address him as 'boy' or 'lad', but 'sweetheart'…that seemed a definite step up and must mean that his new driver liked him a lot. He hoped so, anyway. Henry was always anxious about wanting to please the humans and he very much wanted to be on the best terms possible with the couple in his cab who'd taken him on as their own.

In one sense, Henry was dead right. The Doyons were indeed pulling out all the stops when it came to ingratiating themselves with their new engine. They were trying to get Henry to trust them and develop at least some liking for them before their novelty value wore off and he reverted back to his more usual behaviours.

to be continued...


	4. Part Four

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Four

Several weeks passed. It was now coming on midsummer, one of the best times of the year for anyone who was new to the Island of Sodor to be finding their way. Few newbies that year were as appreciative as Sodor's most recent influx of Canucks for they were still having a splendid time exploring all the ins and outs of their adoptive home and loving their new jobs and their big green locomotive. One of their favourite routine tasks was still the Kipper run. The Doyons had to get up even earlier to get Henry ready since the nights were now short, with dawn typically breaking while they were still at the Brendam Docks collecting their train. But the first part of their run, that still took place in the peaceful, predawn dark, with only the nighttime creatures and the stars to keep watch as Henry chuffed serenely along the mainline.

On this particular late night—or very, very early morning—all seemed even more tranquil than usual. The air was exceptionally mild and dry and was permeated at intervals by the smell of fresh-cut grass. The haying season had begun and the weather had been almost perfect, nothing but sunny skies interspersed with the odd spate of brief local showers which always formed slowly enough that everyone could see them coming in time to throw protective tarps over the curing haystacks if necessary. Then would come the hurried, clear, dewless nights, one of which Henry and his crew were currently enjoying. It was hard, at least for the humans, to think of such runs as work. The opportunity to experience such a perfect night from the cab of a fine, willing steam engine, the effortless movement of the living machine bearing them towards a no-doubt lovely dawn…it seemed far too pleasurable a thing to be considered any sort of onerous toil.

Denise was in a wonderful mood. A recent fortuitous coincidence had led to a real breakthrough with their engine and, ironically, it had all been sparked by Henry's perennial dislike of rain. A week ago to the day, the three of them had begun their Kipper run during one of those foggy, drizzly, intermittently rainy predawn mornings beloved by gardeners and farmers with young plants to water, but hated with a passion by their green Black Five. He was still looking so glum when they parked him under the canopy at one of the Vicarstown platforms for his break that Pierre had gone forward to try and cheer him up.

"Henri! Why so sad, eh? Don' you know dat rain is good for you engines?"

Henry regarded his fireman with disbelief.

"Good? How can it be good?"

"Because it wash you nice an' clean so your colours shine, dat's why," Pierre maintained. He reached up and ran a hand over the edge of Henry's running board. "See? Red like de rose an' white like snow. An' de rest of you, like a fresh leaf. Wid dew on it. A ver' beautiful sight, _non_?"

"If you say so, sir," Henry replied, still obviously dubious. Pierre just chuckled and patted him again before leaving. At least he'd put the idea in the engine's mind.

It was raining more steadily when the engine and his crew began their trek back to Knapford and halfway through their journey, the dense overcast finally seemed to rain itself out. The fog lifted and the cloud layers began to thin. By the time they pulled in at their Knapford platform, the sun was showing though now and then, looking like a big white coin in the still overcast sky. The mid-morning light brightened every time it appeared.

Sir Topham Hatt, holding a cup of tea, came out of his office as Henry pulled in to observe the improving weather conditions for himself. He happened to glance over at his big green Stanier just as the sun reappeared again, throwing down a shaft of light, and did a classic double-take.

"My goodness, Henry!" he exclaimed. "Did you just get repainted?"

Henry regarded his owner with surprise.

"Er, no, sir."

"You're just so bright," Sir Topham said. He approached to inspect his engine more closely. "Why, you're positively glowing!"

"I—I think that's my crew, sir. They've been rubbing my paintwork a lot,"

"Is that so? Well, you look splendid. Keep it up, Henry!"

The Fat Controller moved on and Henry heard him complimenting the humans still in his cab in turn. Pride began to swell within the engine, replacing his surprise. Sir Topham himself had praised him and was now praising his crew—it delighted Henry. For the first time, he felt a real connection with his crew, the sense that they were a true team, and he basked in their good fortune as well as his own as a result. He remained unusually happy for the rest of his workday and the skies soon cleared and the sunshine began streaming down by the early afternoon as if in celebration.

Henry's cheerfulness lasted right into his grooming session that day and he became uncommonly chatty, almost playful when Denise began drying off his face after she'd washed him. His driver grinned at that and encouraged him by running her towel all the way down his chiseled nose in one long sweep, which made him giggle. She knew that most engines had a childish side, despite their adult capacity for hard work, and was glad to see it finally emerging in Henry.

"Like that, do you? Dare I hope that I've just found your ticklish spot?" she teased.

"I'm not ticklish!" Henry exclaimed, then ruined his assertion by laughing again when she ran the towel down the length of his nose a second time. Denise was very glad to hear him laugh. Henry tended towards introspection, and although he would relax completely and lower his safeguards when groomed and maintained, he still didn't interact with her or Pierre on a personal level as much as she would like.

Today, however, was different. Sir Topham's unintentional vindication of what Pierre had said to Henry up at Vicarstown seemed to have upped the Doyons' esteem in the engine's eyes to the point of his wanting to make friendly overtures. Denise was determined to take advantage of her engine's effusive mood while it lasted.

"Heh heh, I think that laugh of yours begs to differ," she retorted, chuckling herself. "And a very cute laugh it is, too. Infectious even. I'll have to see what I can do so Pierre and I can hear it more often." She tenderly wiped over one of Henry's cheeks. "You had a good day today, didn't you, sweetie? Despite that nasty old rain."

Now the big stylized alloy face was positively beaming back at her.

"I did," Henry said in a soft little voice. "And thanks. Thanks for taking care of me, ma'am."

"Oh, you're more than welcome. Didn't I tell you when we started working with you that Pierre had a thing about having the shiniest engine in the shed? Now you know for sure it's true."

"Yeah…" And then, because Henry had felt his fireman working his way along his left-hand driving array and injecting oil into his undercarriage even as they'd been speaking, added even more shyly, "Mister Doyon? Thank you."

"_De rien, _Henri," the unseen Mister in question called back. "Dat's you're welcome, eh? Togedder we make you de best-looking an' best engine on Sodor, you wait an' see."

"That's right. Best engine ever…"

The woman finished with her drying and began just stroking the loco's forehead and smoothening his eyebrows into place, using her bare hand. He still looked very happy.

"Henry…we're getting to be kind of friends, right?" she asked him.

Henry felt his heart thump, hard. "I—I hope so."

"Good. And now that we are friends, I was thinking…you really ought to have another, less formal way to address us. It's quite all right if you call us Denise and Pierre anytime we're alone like this or even out on the rails as long as no one else of any authority is around. We'd like it if you called us by our first—"

She jolted to a halt. Henry's expression had flipped from happy to horrified in an instant.

"I can't do that!" he cried.

Denise regarded her engine with surprise. That British reserve, she thought. It's ground in too deep in this one…

"Not at all?" she asked, her voice faint and a little astonished.

"Nooo," Henry maintained, sounding miserable. His expression turned beseeching, pleading with her not to be angry with him. Denise just kept looking back at him in a kindly neutral way as she considered alternatives.

"Well…you still ought to have something else you can call us. Maybe…Missus Denise? No, sounds dumb… Um, Miss Denise? Oh! I know! How about Miz Denise? That's still a little formal, but friendly too. Could you manage that?"

Pierre, still down on the ground by Henry's drivers, snorted. "An' you can call me Mister Rhett."

"Quiet, you. So how about it, Henry? Would you like to call us Miz Denise and Mister Pierre? When we're alone like this, just being friends?"

Henry turned the names over in his mind in turn, already appearing relieved.

"Maybe…yes…Miz Denise." He looked surprised himself, then began smiling again. "Yes, I like that. Miz Denise. And Mister Pierre!"

"Dat's me," the man's voice floated up.

Henry heaved a huge sigh, mellowing out once more now that his brief crisis had been averted. Denise went back to stroking his forehead, still looking quite thoughtful. He's so eager to please, she was thinking. Anxious, really. And a little afraid of us, all of us…not the best combination. Then she brightened again over how readily he'd accepted her recommendations about the naming issue. Maybe it was time to kick it up and lay it on even thicker…

Pierre and Denise did. And Henry, much to their pleasure, had continued to respond to their attentions in a very positive manner, growing ever more extroverted and lively, looking forward to their days together with increasing zest, becoming a fine companion as well as a hard-working locomotive.

All of which was why it was such a shock to his crew on that fine predawn morning when Henry suddenly slammed on his brakes and tried to stop dead.

Denise did have some warning, although she would find it hard to describe how afterwards. The closest she could come was to say it felt like taking one's foot off the gas of a fast-moving car; the momentum continued, yet something was missing. "Brace!" she'd shouted at Pierre in French, their agreed-upon signal, and both had done so a split second before the throttle had slapped out of the woman's hand and the brake lever engaged on its own. The lot of them screeched to a squealing halt, faster than the emergency braking Henry's new crew had practiced with him the day they'd first driven him, but not too much faster.

The humans' first instinct was to look out at the track on ahead. Yet they could see nothing, nothing at all. Pierre jumped out, a few seconds before the cab floor beneath the woman's feet began to shudder in waves. Denise looked down in wonder. Scared to death, she thought. What _is _this?

Henry was indeed terrified. The only reason he was still sitting still at all was because he was trying to decide whether to run backwards or bolt forward right past the ghost in the tree. He was still sitting there and shaking when Pierre got up next to his front axel.

"Henri! W'ad's wrong, eh? You see somet'ing dat scare you?"

The engine started violently, so much so that Denise was jostled in his cab. The last thing he'd expected was for one of his crew to disembark and join him. And it put him in a terrible quandary, torn now between his desperate desire to get away and his ingrained need to not leave the man behind to fend for himself. Henry began to pant in his fright and confusion. Mister Pierre had a big flashlight with him and was starting to pan it around, still looking for something on the rails.

"W'ad you see, Henri? Why you stop, eh?"

Poor Henry couldn't help stuttering as he answered. "There's a g-ghost," he whispered. "I-in the tree."

"Tree? W'ad tree? Dat big bush dere?"

He swung his light on a large hazel shrub growing all by itself in the meadow next to the tracks, only meters away. Henry continued to quake miserably, especially when his fireman stepped away from him and off into the long grass and started approaching the ghost.

"Please be careful!" the engine warned, although it came out as such a breathless little squeak that it was barely audible.

"I'll be okay, Henri," Pierre assured him. He continued running his light over the bush. "Hmm, you know, dere _is _somet'ing dere," he said more loudly. "Somet'ing white an' misty."

"The ghost," Henry moaned.

"What's that, Henry?" Denise, leaning way out of his cab, asked. "You think you saw a ghost?"

"No, 'e didn't," her husband interjected. He went forward a few more steps to more carefully examine the filmy hazel branches. "Oh, it's spiders! _Araignees."_

"Spiders?" Henry yelped. He was so startled by his fireman's pronouncement that he forgot to be frightened. "How can it be spiders?!"

"Liddle baby spiders. T'ousands and t'ousands of dem. Denise! It start to rain 'ere yesterday before lunch, _non_?"

"It must have. We were watching it come in from the southwest when we were still up at Crovan's Gate, remember?"

"Yes…" Pierre started to grin. When he turned his head to look at Henry, the light from the big loco's headlamp made the man's teeth flash whitely beneath his black mustache. "Henri! Dis ghost is just spider webs. De babies, dey all spin dere liddle webs togedder to make a shelter from de rain yesterday. We only see it because dere are so very many of dem."

"There are?" Henry exclaimed. "I can't see any spiders!"

"Dat's because dey are still tiny, like de heads of pins. Just babies, fresh out of de egg sac. Dey probably all hatch early yesterday morning an' climb up in de bush to try an', um… Denise, _cheri_? What you call dat in English, what spiders do when de float away?"

"Ballooning," the woman supplied helpfully. She was still hanging out of the cab window, mainly because she no longer had any sense that Henry was on the verge of bolting away. In fact, he didn't even seem all that scared anymore; he was too embroiled in what his fireman was saying to him. "Can you actually see any of them?" she called to Pierre. "They must be clustered up for the night."

"Dey are. Wait, I point dem out wid de torch. Henri? Do you want to see some liddle babies? If you come up closer, next to de bush, you maybe see dem."

"Go ahead, Henry," Denise encouraged. "It's okay if you drive yourself, just for now. You can go only as far as you want, whatever makes you comfortable."

The big green Stanier was torn again. He was still on high alert and primed to run, yet his fireman was standing right next to the ghost by now and looked completely unafraid. Henry decided to trust his judgement and his claim that the sheen of white was just webbing. He crept forward, wheel turn by wheel turn.

"Dere you go," Pierre said to him when he had gotten as close as the tracks would let him get. "You see dem now?"

Henry peered closely at the hazel shrub. Now that everything was better illuminated by his headlamp and Pierre's torch, he had to admit to himself that the white film did look an awful lot like fine spider webbing and here and there amongst the silken strands hung what looked almost like misshapen plums. Pierre told him that the shapes were actually the spiderlings, huddling together by the hundreds in each cluster for safety.

"If I touch dem, dey would break apart, all the babies running ever' which way. But we just look. We let dem sleep, eh?"

Henry said nothing. He was starting to feel very foolish.

His fireman went back to his cab after that and Denise hopped out in turn to have a quick look for herself. After that, his crew took charge again and sent him on…it was getting too dangerous to let him sit idle on the mainline any longer, despite the early hour. Henry went about his job of picking up the Kipper and taking it up to Vicarstown nervously, in a state of hypervigilance, anxious to once again make up for his lapse. Both humans could feel that he'd regressed back to how he'd behaved for them during their first few days of getting to know each other and it saddened them.

Denise already knew that there'd be a train of empties waiting for them to ferry back down to the docks and so parked Henry at a service platform just outside the station proper that day once the Kipper had been delivered. When she went forward to speak with the engine before leaving for a while with Pierre, he regarded her apprehensively.

The instant their eyes met, Henry stammered, "I-I'm sorry."

Denise responded with a kind and tolerant smile.

"Sorry for what? For stopping? Henry, it's natural to be afraid of things you don't understand and to want to get away from them if they seem dangerous. We humans are just as susceptible to being frightened as any engine too. The thing is, most scary-seeming stuff isn't scary at all if you stay and check it out instead of running away. In fact, you can miss out on some really wonderful things if you don't wait, like that ghostly-looking giant web spun by all those tiny orb weaver spiders we just saw, more baby spiders together in one place all at once than Pierre and I have ever seen before…more than we'll likely ever see again in our lifetimes. So, there's that to consider. There's almost always a good explanation for what at first seems inexplicable and sometimes what you discover is pretty amazing. But you'll never know unless you wait and check it out.

"The other thing I want you to know, Henry, is that if you ever do see some actual danger on the tracks, or things just feel wrong to you for whatever reason, Pierre and I are perfectly all right with you taking the initiative and stopping on your own. A loco we drove back in Canada saved our lives once one night by stopping dead and backing up some—I'll tell you about that sometime, you'll like it. Anyway, all we ask should you want or need to stop in the future is that you wait and tell us what's wrong or simply let us go and check things out for you. That's just part of our half of the job, to investigate and then decide what to do. Does that sound like a good plan to you, Henry? That the next time you're scared or worried about something, that you let us help you out?"

The engine stared back at her, his eyes huge. Nobody but nobody had ever wanted to discuss his fears with him so frankly. His other crews had mostly tried to ignore his misbehaviours or had humoured him, and the odd person had gotten angry with him. But talk to him about it afterwards? Only if they wanted to admonish him. Yet what Denise had just said to him didn't sound like an admonishment at all. It sounded like they wanted to work with him in how to handle it.

"Okay," he finally said.

"Good. See you in a bit," Denise said, and off she went.

Henry watched her go, his expression still sober and pensive. He had a lot to think about.

to be continued...


	5. Part Five

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE…

Part Five

The fruits of Henry's pondering were put to the test only a few days later. A mass of hot, exceptionally humid air began pushing in over the entire region late one afternoon and the day's temperatures actually began to rise as night came on instead of cooling down. The sun set that evening beneath a mackerel sky, the heavens partly obscured by advancing patches of the sort of mid-level cloud which usually preceded rain. By dawn, a few patches were still drifting through, but each scale-like individual cloudlet was swelling upward as if convectively pregnant and birthing its own little fracturing tower. Denise and Pierre spotted the unusual clouds as soon as the predawn light got strong enough for them to read the sky while they were still collecting The Flying Kipper at the Brendam Docks. The sight of them, coupled with the abnormal heat so early in the new day, got the two humans all worked up.

"Check out the ACC," Denise exclaimed to her husband outside. "We'll have weather by this afternoon, I'll bet."

"Earlier dan dat," Pierre opined. "Showers dis morning already, I t'ink, den dey explode into CBs wid de noon sun on dem."

"You may be right… Gosh, it's hot! This must be the hottest day we've had since coming here and it's not even sunrise yet. Feels like Southern Ontario. Hot and sticky."

"Ontario wid a severe t'understorm watch on," the man added as he swung himself back aboard, sounding gleeful, and Henry, who'd been listening in on their chat, felt his heart sink. The engine had only understood part of what his crew had been talking about, but the expectation that there'd be storms later had come through loud and clear. What he couldn't figure out was how they could possibly know such a thing. It looked like it was going to be a mostly sunny morning. And what in the world was an a-cee-cee and cee-bees? Henry chuffed off to begin his Kipper run, still somewhat apprehensive and sorely confused. The only thing he really agreed with was that it was uncommonly warm, even for the middle of summer.

The trip up to Vicarstown went off without a hitch. Henry kept looking around for storms, yet never saw a thing, and he began to wonder if his crew was mistaken. But then, while resting at his platform in the station, he overheard some passers-by talking about the same thing, that there might be thunderstorms later, and _then _the station guard keeping an eye on him mentioned it to another station guard and this time he used the word 'forecast', as if it were a given. Henry began to fret. Rain was bad enough and storms were worse; he was afraid of thunder and lightning, although he tried to hide it. He was in quite the worried tizzy by the time his crew came back for him and moved him over to the yard to pick up a new train of empties and some new trucks intended for Brendam that had come in from the Mainland.

They'd no sooner gotten underway on the return leg of their job than Henry saw, to his horror, that there _were _clouds forming, even though it was only mid-morning, and that they already looked a lot like the big fat clouds that made rain showers. Most of the clouds were off to his right, over where the narrow-gauge rail line ran in from Glennock. Henry eyed them warily even so, remembering Mister Pierre's talk of 'exploding' showers all the while he ran up on and then past Crovan's Gate, and was still so unnerved afterwards that he actually pulled a bit when they ran through the old cutting en route to Kellsthorpe. Denise, grinning, let the loco go. She knew perfectly well that Henry routinely eavesdropped on the conversations she had with her husband, for which reason they most often spoke in English when around the engine, and she had a pretty good idea of what was sparking his sudden need to hurry.

And when they later came out of the stretch of rail that ran through the Whispering Woods—disaster! The southwestern portions of the Island spread out before them were also full of sudden clouds, and what's more, they were already so huge and towering that their tops could be seen from miles away. Nasty, menacing, classic, summertime rainstorm clouds… Or the promising start of some exciting severe thunderstorms and squalls to thrill the weather weenies…it all depended on one's point of view. Henry's crew, of course, fit the latter category, and it was lucky for their engine that they appreciated that Henry himself most assuredly did not share their enthusiasm and were feeling kind enough to cater to his trepidation.

"I…think we've got time to take the scenic route today," Denise remarked as they approached the turnoff to the eastern end of the Loop line and steered Henry onto the slower alternative to the mainline tracks. She'd already seen that the biggest, best developed rainclouds were only shooting up well inland and that they shouldn't be troubled by any convective activity right next to the coastline itself. Henry seemed to agree with her assessment and quit leaning on the throttle as soon as they'd gotten onto the Loop and settled down to a slower pace.

Their coastal route kept them successfully away from the developing showers and Henry grew more cheerful as they completed their task of delivering their rearranged train to Brendam. After that it was back to Knapford and one memorable moment when they first hooked back up with the mainlines and finally had to skirt one of the giant rainclouds parading by just north of Wellsworth. Henry got a smattering of raindrops in his face off that one and was so hyped up by then that he actually yelped and briefly surged ahead. His good-natured crew again let it go. They thought his response so overwrought and silly that they'd had to bite their tongues so as not to laugh aloud and embarrass him, but it was a near thing…a very near thing.

Sir Topham Hatt came out of his office at Knapford as soon as they'd pulled into their platform at the station.

"Ah, good. There you are," he said. "I suppose you've been watching what's been going on with the weather."

"We sure have, sir," Denise replied, leaning out of her window. "Nothing too severe yet, I hope."

"Not yet, but we've already had reports of heavy rain and strong winds. We deal with this sort of problem every five or six years here on Sodor. The danger will be if these showers move into the valley between Ulfstead and the branch line up to Peel Godred. We could get some persistent thunderstorms if that happens and that whole area is prone to localized flooding and worse. The river always does a good job of clearing the flooding, but still…lightning strikes, landslides…we've had our share. What I'd like you to do is stand by until later this afternoon in case the towns along the branch line take some damage and need assistance. And check the tracks too, of course, and the stations, if you do go up."

"We'll be ready, Sir Topham Hatt, sir. Oh! Sir! We actually have some emergency kit on hand especially for this sort of situation, but it's back in our car at Tidmouth. Could we have permission to run over quickly and pick it up? We could get Henry turned around on the turntable, too, and then come back and wait in the yard if you like. It'd free up the platforms for the other engines."

The Fat Controller regarded the woman quite fondly. He liked his new crew's enthusiasm and was intrigued by the thought of them having their own emergency equipment. Sir Topham had it in his head that Canada was still a very wild and rather uncivilized country and that the railroaders there were likely quite used to dealing with disasters, natural and otherwise.

"Ah yes, you go right ahead and take your time," he replied. "If we send you up to the valley, it won't be until latter anyway, not until the storms are over. Make sure you get a good lunch too and pack something for later. Oh, and if we do need you to work this evening, don't worry about taking out the Kipper tomorrow morning. Report in by one tomorrow afternoon and that'll be fine."

"Thanks, sir!" said Denise, with real appreciation. "We'll go get that kit and get set up in the yard and be ready either way."

"Very good," said Sir Topham, and favoured her with another approving smile.

Henry found himself hustled back to his shed after that, but not to rest. All the humans did was toss a bunch more stuff in his cab before turning him about and returning to Knapford. This time they stayed in the yard, parking him in a siding close enough to the station platforms to keep an eye on all the people and activity there, yet also offer them a good view of what was happening inland. Henry knew that they were meant to wait for possible work later on the Peel Godred branch line and wasn't sure what to think. He'd be glad for the opportunity to do something exceptionally useful, of course, as would any engine, but the thought of having to go anywhere close to the storms alarmed him. He hoped that the Fat Controller meant what he'd said about not sending them until the bad weather was over.

The big green Stanier was left on his own for a while then, though not alone. Percy and Thomas both came by and chatted with him in turn and even Gordon exchanged a few words when he went by to pick up his coaches for his noontime express run. None of the other locos seemed at all concerned about the heavy downpours which were intermittently drenching parts of the Island. Most of the showers were still developing well north of the mainline and thus of little consequence to Henry's friends; it was only Henry himself who remained glued to the weather story unfolding in the skies.

By the time Henry's crew returned and tossed yet another bag into his cabin, he was fretting and apprehensive again. Something was rearing up far off to the northeast above all the other clouds, right about where he thought Whiff's waste depot might be. It looked almost like long streamers of fog, reaching up like skeletal fingers from a thick brilliant white mass of a hand. The more Henry stared at it, the worse he felt. He couldn't understand why something that looked like fog was stretching itself so high up into the air or why it inspired such dread.

Henry's driver, by contrast, was about as upbeat and energetic as ever he'd seen her. She stayed aboard with him to fire in a fresh feed of coal and get his boiler pressures back up while Mister Pierre went over to the station to get an update, then she rifled through and picked out some of the stuff both humans had loaded into Henry's cab over at Tidmouth and hopped out and set up a folding chair right by the siding out where her engine could look down and see it. For herself, though, she'd pulled out something new, a little folding camp stool made of canvas lashed to a wooden framework. Which she opened up and put down on Henry's running board right next to the left side of his face after hitching herself up on him over his buffers.

"Ha, fits perfectly," she exclaimed, seating herself and shifting about. She lifted a hand to pat Henry's cheek. "Just you and me, right, big guy? There are some advantages to being kinda small."

Henry goggled down at her, completely bemused. "Uh, right," he said.

"You don't mind me sitting here, do you?"

"No! Of course not."

"Well, good! Cause it took some doing to find a comfy portable stool that wouldn't scratch your paintwork. But this'll work. There's plenty of room. I think Pierre might fall off to the side, though, so we'll just leave him on the ground where he belongs."

Henry could just barely see her face and could tell by her expression that she was just kidding around about Pierre, yet was still at something of a loss. He expected humans to have to get up on him to clean him or to work on him for one reason or another. Never, though, had a single one of them ever chosen to just sit next to his face to keep him company. At least he thought that she had climbed up to keep him company. Maybe it was more so she could see better since she was, in her own words, kinda small and short.

Her little hand stroked over his cheek again. Denise had seen how glum her loco was looking as soon as she and her husband had come back from lunch and knew very well what it was that had him so worried; she could even _feel _that he was worried just by the harder-than-usual texture of the amorphous alloy metal which made up his face. Engines only relaxed their safeguards completely if they felt safe and secure. Poor Henry was likely gearing up in his mind to steam into a tempest.

"Do you know what kind of cloud that is over there, Henry?" she asked him now in an attempt to mollify him. "That very high, fuzzy-looking cloud way up in the sky off towards the Blue Mountain Quarry?"

Relief gusted through the engine. So she HAD noticed! "Nooo."

"That's the top of a great big ol' thunderstorm, way taller than the smaller ones I can see starting to form over towards Ulfstead. It's a special type of what we call cirrus cloud and when a storm is very strong, you can sometimes see a big mass of it spreading up and out like that even though the storm itself is miles away."

"Oh," said Henry, rather faintly. "It's not coming here, is it?"

"Nope. All the weather's moving northeastward today. Just showers mostly so far. Not too much CB activity yet, really."

"Cee…bee?"

"Oh, sorry. CB is a short way of saying cumulonimbus. That's the proper name for a thunderstorm cloud."

"Clouds have names?" Henry exclaimed, startled.

"Sure. All the different types of clouds have their own special names, just like the different types of birds have their own names and even plants and insects."

Henry mouthed the special cloud name his driver had just told him, reciting it to himself. He'd overheard humans in the past saying the odd word he didn't understand when speaking about the weather, but he'd never known that the words were meant to describe clouds. He already knew the names of all his animal friends and could name most of the trees he saw too, and the notion that the clouds he'd seen all around him for all of his life had names too quite excited him.

"Is—that a CB too?" he asked Denise. "That closest one?"

The woman grinned, pleased by how swiftly her engine had dropped his apprehension in favour of learning something new to do with nature. His old crew had commented before leaving on how much Henry appeared to love the natural world, something which had always struck them as odd considering the mechanical essence of Henry's own being. "What? That little puffy thing there?" she replied cheerfully. "No, that's just what we call a cumulus cloud, and as long as they don't get any bigger and there aren't too many of them, they usually mean that you're going to have a nice, mostly sunny day. But today…well, you see how quickly it's already swelling up and getting taller and bigger, that cloud?"

"Yes?" said Henry, his tone now eager.

"That's a sign that it'll grow into a much larger, fatter version of a cumulus cloud called a cumulus congestus, or you can just call it a towering cumulus or TCU…that's what most weather fans call it. You can get good rain showers out of TCUs, like the one that brushed us when we came back from the Brendam Docks earlier."

"Towering cumulus," Henry repeated softly. Rainclouds were towering cumulus clouds. It made them sound wonderful, almost majestic. "And then…they turn into cu—cu…um…thunderstorms?" he ventured.

"Yes! They CAN become thunderstorms, or cumulonimbus clouds. But you need special conditions for that to happen, just like what's happening today." She paused to stroke her engine's face and was gratified to feel that he'd relaxed considerably. "See? You knew all this all along, sweetheart. You just didn't know the words to describe it."

Henry smiled for the first time that morning. He knew full well that he wasn't the smartest engine and felt ashamed sometimes when he naively believed everything the other engines told him and found out afterwards that what they'd said was dead wrong. But the humans—his humans—were different. He believed that they could be trusted and that Miz Denise was being honest with him, that she just wanted to share something which she thought he might like. And he _did_ like it…well, he liked the cloud-naming part of it. Actually watching the weather, watching all the TCUs turning into CBs or maybe not, was something he'd just as soon continue doing from very far away.

"I hope that thunderstorm near the Blue Mountain Quarry turns back into a cumulus cloud before we get there," he finally said in response, which earned him another reassuring pat.

"Oh, I think it'll be mostly over before we ever get there, Henry. We'd still have to go to the docks first to pick up supplies and that'd take up a good hour or two on its own. Besides, even if the worst happened and we got struck by lightning, it wouldn't much matter. You engines are far too sturdy to be much damaged that way."

"We are?"

Now THAT was an eye-opener! Henry had always been horrified by the thought of being struck by lightning. It didn't help that he'd once seen a bolt hit a tall distant tree and knock it down in pieces. One of the pieces had even caught fire; it had frightened him terribly. Yet here was his driver telling him that he wouldn't be much damaged if lightning hit him.

"We are?" Henry said again, trying to prompt her, and Denise, who'd been momentarily distracted by the sight of Pierre returning from the Knapford platforms, turned back to her engine.

"What's that, sweetie? Oh, right, the lightning. Well, it's true, Henry. Haven't you ever been at an open station with one or both of your crew standing out on the platform or maybe they were just outside refueling you, and had a thunderstorm start up close by? I'll bet your crew jumped right back into your cab as quick as they could, didn't they?"

Henry sorted carefully through his long store of memories. "Yes," he said at last. "They did!"

"Well, see? They knew that an engine cab is one of the safest places to be if you're caught out in a thunderstorm. And here's Pierre, my better half. Hon, I had to put your chair down by the tracks right below me. No room up here. Did you get me one of those fruit tarts?"

"I get you two. An' for me, t'ree more. You watch dat monster storm in de valley? I t'ink Sir Topham was right an' we get called out for dat one."

Denise leaned down to snag the pastries he held up to her, settled happily back down on her stool and started unscrewing the thermos full of hot coffee she'd had ready and waiting. "I've been watching. In fact, I was just telling Henry that getting hit by lightning is no big deal if you're an engine. Especially given that we've had some practical experience."

"Ah_ oui, _de Toronto yard." Like Denise, the man relaxed into his folding chair and balanced his own napkinful of fruit tarts on one knee while reaching down to retrieve his own thermos which his wife had thoughtfully left for him in just the right place. "We don' ged 'it ourselves dat time, Henri, but de engine right next to us one siding over ged a bolt right on de top of 'is boiler."

Henry gasped. "Oh no!"

"Oh yes," Denise continued. "That was a real surprise storm too. It formed right over us. We were just expecting rain and we and the other crew were glad that we were already inside our engines where it was nice and dry, and then—kaboom! The very first darn strike, too!"

Pierre laughed. "I scream like a liddle girl!"

"We all did! Us, the other crew, and both engines! My gosh, it was loud! We thought for a few seconds that someone's boiler _had _exploded, but of course it was just the thunder."

"Dat railway worker furder down de track, he jump too. But he got de shock."

"Oh yeah! I forgot about him. Henry? Would you believe a guy just walking across the other engine's siding tracks a hundred feet ahead got a jolt off that lightning strike? Nothing dangerous—he said afterwards it was about like getting the biggest static shock of your life—but it sure did make that poor guy bounce. And guess where he ran to after that, to be safe?"

Henry regarded both humans with wide eyes.

"A…an engine cab?"

"That's right. There was a freighter parked near him and that's where he bolted to and climbed aboard. We humans are actually pretty safe inside your cabs during a lightning storm as long as we stay away from any openings. When you get hit, the electrical charge off the bolt just sort of runs down over your exterior and down your undercarriage and into the ground. Sometimes the shock travels some on the rails, but usually not too far and it doesn't stay strong enough to be fatal to us…the ground gets most of it."

"Dat engine who ged 'it, 'e was just fine too, Henri. All 'e get was a liddle round mark in de paint where it get blistered right where de lightning 'it him. We talk to 'im after an' 'e said it was like getting 'ot work done by a blowtorch an' a big shower of sparks all down one side, dat's what it feel like to him."

"Yeah, so, like I said, no big deal for you engines," Denise concluded, "and I know you've had hot work done before, haven't you, Henry? It wasn't so bad, was it now?"

"Nooo. It's always…tingly. And hot. Very hot. Like the hottest firebox ever."

"Painful?"

"Not really," he admitted, and both humans, satisfied with his response, turned back to their food and drink after that.

Henry was quite thoughtful all while his crew tended to their own version of refueling. It seemed that he'd been worried for a long time for nothing. He wondered if his previous crews had known what the Doyons knew about lightning and why they'd never said anything to him about it not being all that dangerous to engines. But then, he'd never asked, not once. Even today, it was all Miz Denise and Mister Pierre volunteering to share their information…not so much because he'd asked first.

The next couple of hours passed far more pleasantly for the engine than he could have believed, given the scary weather happening so close at hand. Occasionally, Mister Pierre would return to his cab and build up his fire just enough to keep his boiler simmering and then he'd walk over to the station to check in with the Fat Controller. Miz Denise remained in high good spirits and at one point told Henry that she and Pierre surely had the best job ever that day, to be paid to kick back and relax in the sunshine with such a great engine as himself while they watched a weather event uncommon to the area develop before them. And it _was _turning into an event. The people in the valley were being hit hard, with lightning strikes and torrential downpours and the occasional damaging gust as the persistent storm, pushed against the higher slopes by the prevailing winds, dwindled and then redeveloped several times. At its worst, the people watching from Knapford could even hear it, the long low rumbling peals of thunder echoing from one side of the valley to the other and sounding like a distant artillery barrage, and that was when Henry was most grateful for his driver's close company and for the kind comfort of her hand on his cheek. He was also glad that there were too many other big clouds in the way for him to see any lightning, not even any flashes. Most of the bolts coming out of the big storm, according to what Mister Pierre gleaned from the reports reaching Sir Topham's office, were dropping straight down to the ground.

By teatime, Henry and his crew were on their way to the docks to pick up three flatbeds full of heavy timbers, lumber and nails, and coils of rope and oil tarps. The closest showers were all subsiding and even the persistent valley storm's big cirrus top was shrinking and starting to dissipate, hinting that its fury was spent at last. When they reached the turnoff to the Peel Godred branch line itself, all the cloud left within eyesight was flattening out and vanishing fast. Their arrival had been well-timed.

Or had it? The very first little dip the tracks took to accommodate a low lying part of the topography was flooded.

Denise eased Henry to a halt just feet away from where the rails disappeared beneath the fast-flowing water. They weren't the only people being inconvenienced, either. The valley's main eastern road paralleled the rail line just a stone's throw away and was likewise underwater, with several cars waiting on either side of the flooded section. The water on the road was clearly subsiding—there was a broad margin of wet pavement on both sides already—and a lot of the drivers had gotten out to watch the last of the floodwaters cascade off the nearby hillside and into the pool which had formed in the depression between the steep slopes and the railway embankment, a pool still deep enough to overtop the tracks themselves. The Doyons wondered whether the two small-bore culverts cored through the base of the embankment were clogged up or whether they'd just been temporarily overwhelmed. They hoped it was the latter, otherwise the drivers would be waiting for a long time for the pool to drain itself and their road to clear.

Denise and Pierre weren't even sure about taking Henry across. Even though the water still running over the rails looked shallow, erosion under the ties was a real concern. But that was why they'd gone back to Tidmouth for their emergency kit. Pierre quickly shed his shoes and socks for a pair of old sneakers, rolled and tied his pant legs up above his knees with shoelaces, and grabbed his coupling rod and a coil of rope before he climbed down out of the cab. One end of the rope he tied off about his own body, the other end he looped over Henry's buffer beam along with most of the coiled remainder, then he waded out onto the tracks before his engine, playing out his rope line as he went. The current was strong and sucked greedily at his legs as he sidled carefully forward, but the water turned out to be only mid-calf-deep at worst and very clear, with little suspended sediment. Easy enough to see through so one could assess the state of the submerged tracks beneath its surface, in other words...

The people waiting on either side of the flooded road watched with interest as Pierre inched his way along the rails, poking through the water with his coupling rod from time to time. "Could you come and test our roadbed next?" one of the men called in jest and Pierre flashed him a big grin.

"Sorry," he called back. "I only 'ave time to do dis for our Henri. We can't 'ave him derail wid such an important load be'ind."

Some of the watching locals nodded agreeably. All of them were big railfans and could be quite judgmental when it came to how the North Western engines were treated by their crews. They approved of the foreign fireman's evident concern for Henry's safety and his mission, which was self-evident from the supplies he carried.

"You look like y've done this a time 'r two," another man said. "Y' get weather like this back in Canada much?"

Pierre grinned again. He'd gotten used to people knowing exactly who he was even if he had no idea of who they might be in turn. The Island's media coverage of Sir Topham Hatt's hiring of a wild colonial couple from abroad to join his railway team had seen to that.

"Oh, we get some terrible big t'understorms dere in de summers. An' wid ' ail sometimes, even a tornado some years. We saw flooding like dis when we drive some of de government engines in Ontario an' Quebec. We always get t'rough, but 'ad to be ver' careful because of who we carry."

More nods. They continued watching as Pierre reached the far side of the flooded section and turned around and began swinging his coupling rod towards himself in a beckoning gesture, his signal that it was safe to come on. Henry whistled in acknowledgement, a few short blasts, before rolling forward as smoothly as he could, trying his best not to splash up any water.

Pierre had stood aside and gathered his rope up in big loops as the engine approached and hopped aboard without Henry's even needing to stop. "Some ballast lost, but no big 'oles," he reported cheerfully, speaking in English so Henry could follow along. "Not'ing under de ties gone, just around de sides."

"So not enough erosion to be dangerous," mused Denise. "Yet."

"_Non,_" Pierre agreed. He sat down in the folding chair he'd set up in the cab, pulled off his sodden sneakers and started toweling his feet dry. "We should look again later, w'en we come back t'rough an' it's dry. But I t'ink it stay okay."

It turned out to be the only real obstacle they found on the branch line. The tracks were clear after that with the first village, Abbey, only a few miles further along. The station there and its small parking lot was packed with waiting people and lorries when they pulled in. Some of the folk even cheered—"It's Henry!", "Yay, Henry's here!" some of them cried, for the big green engine was well familiar to all the residents of Abbey from his frequent trips up to the Blue Mountain Quarry and the organic waste dump. Denise steered Henry into the through siding and Pierre hopped down again to uncouple the last flatbed and leave it. It held everything that the emergency team in the village had requested and they were planning to load the flatbed right back up again over the next few days with storm debris. The people in Abbey had actually been quite lucky. Aside from minor roof damage, shingles lost and the like, and some fences blown over and a few windows springing leaks, their residences had been spared. The wind and lightning had unleashed their combined savagery on the trees in the village instead, and knocked down a number of them.

Henry and his crew ran into several sad victims of the storm's wrath on the very outskirts of Abbey once they began to hurry onward to their next stop. Four stately full-grown oaks had been felled en masse and one had crashed down so hard that two of its largest limbs had rolled onto the tracks. A crew was already hard at work cutting up the fallen trees and rushed to pull the limbs out of Henry's way as soon as they saw him coming. The Doyons leaned out of their cab to greet the men and express their condolences while they waited. The trees had been hundreds of years old, part of Abbey's perennial natural backdrop for as long as anyone could remember. It would take several human generations' worth of time to regrow worthy successors.

With the tracks once more safely cleared, Denise sent her engine on. Henry moved carefully through the men's staging area, mindful of their closeness to his track. He continued to move slowly and carefully even when he was well past everyone and responded with a curious sluggishness when his driver asked for more speed. Surprised, she opened up Henry's throttle a little more and again his response was all but nonexistent.

Denise looked over all of the engine's gauges, pondering the problem. It felt to her as though Henry was napping—balking without coming to an outright stop. An engineer friend had once told her that engines could withhold their steam power somewhat similarly to how humans could hold their breaths and deprive themselves of oxygen, becoming likewise progressively weaker. It was most typically a subconscious response for the engines and meant that they were so worried or absorbed in fretting over something that their ability to move forward at all became compromised. Yet Denise could see nothing on the tracks on ahead, nothing at all, which would spook even the wariest of locomotives. Then Henry seemed to come out of it and surged on ahead again until he'd come up to the speed which his driver had set for him.

Denise glanced over at her husband, who'd likewise noticed Henry's brief reluctance. "What was that?" he remarked in French.

"Dunno, but something bothered him," she murmured back. "I'll try asking him about it later on."

And yet only minutes later, as they came up on the little station opposite Hawin Lake, Henry hesitated again, his speed falling off until he was barely crawling along. Denise knew that there was a viaduct crossing a ravine just past Hawin and she wondered—correctly, as it turned out, although she didn't realize it—whether Henry mightn't have had some past difficulties with debris running over the tracks off the nearby steep hillside or with using the span itself. Whatever the issue was, it resolved itself the instant her engine saw that the suspect way ahead was clear and he picked up speed on his own and resumed steaming ahead willingly enough. Interesting, Denise thought, once more exchanging glances with Pierre, although neither of them said anything aloud this time.

Old Bailey the stationmaster was already outside waiting for them and Henry was brought to a brief stop so his crew could confer with the other man. He'd already walked the track some and had checked the nearby bridge and the exterior of his stationhouse and was glad to report that all appeared to be in order; indeed, apart from a lot of runoff still rushing through the ravine beneath the viaduct, there was little trace of the storm left. He also swore that Hawin Lake itself had risen by several inches. The Doyons told Old Bailey that he'd likely have good luck then if he had time to get a line in the lake that evening before sunset. All the fresh water would no doubt stir the fish up and get them biting and he might be able to catch his own supper before he went home.

They moved on. The Island's organic waste dump site and then the turnoff to the Blue Mountain Quarry lay along their route, but neither destination needed their attention on this day. The folks working at the waste depot had already reported in that they were fine and Sir Topham had warned that checking the line to the quarry was a job best left to a handcar crew for the time being, just on the off chance that all the rain had found some new way to percolate down into the higher ground and cause some instability in the railbed itself. One of the narrow-gauge railway lines crossed their own tracks too, but again, the soundness of the other railway's lines was not their responsibility. The most important part of their job, seeing to the needs of the good people of the small village of Kirk Machan, was coming up only a few miles further along.

Henry's arrival at Kirk Machan's single station was greeted with the same sort of enthusiasm and relief that he'd received at Abbey. The small village had been pummeled, with several houses and their community center taking the worst of it; in fact, the center had been struck by lightning twice, which had shattered its roof and part of one wall. Luckily, the power had been off while the storm had done all its damage and it had rained hard enough throughout to suppress any incipient fires. The foreman supervising the emergency crews who began unloading and lining up their supplies on one of the platforms took stock of what they'd been brought, compared it to some notes he'd taken, and informed Henry's crew that they'd need more and that he'd already called up to the goods yard in Peel Godred to see what was readily available. He quickly wrote up a list for Denise to pass on while the other men finished emptying the flatbeds and thanked the two railway workers for their quick response. Better they be kept busy rebuilding for the next week than having to help tend to a single serious injury, the foreman concluded, for that was the good news—no one had gotten hurt. Lots of jangled nerves maybe, considering how crazy the thunder and lightning had been, but nothing worse.

Kirk Machan had been prudently built on a slight slope and the only hints left of all the rain that must have come down were the giant puddles that still filled every slight depression. But the Doyons also spotted stretches of flattened vegetation and muddied soil on either side of the tracks and between some of the houses as they guided Henry slowly along, mute testimony to the streams of runoff that must've rushed down and through the village for a time. Mother Nature had not been kind to Kirk Machan on this day, that was for sure. Still…no injuries. That alone made everything else tolerable.

Peel Godred was a much larger community than Kirk Machan and only five miles further north. And yet, as often happened given the vagaries of nature, they'd received nothing but heavy rain and the occasional strong gust all while the real lightshow and its thunderous soundtrack had raged away for hours only a short distance away. The goods yard and the branch line's terminal station lay on the town's northern side and had gotten the least rain of all. There were barely even any puddles to be seen anymore. The yardmaster there was expecting Henry and took charge of fulfilling Kirk Machan's request for more supplies as soon as Denise turned over the notebook list. It gave Henry and his crew a little time to get themselves turned around, after which they waited at a service platform while their flatbeds were being reloaded.

Denise herself disembarked for a while to stretch her legs and check on how her engine was doing. Henry eyed her alertly as soon as she entered his field of view and smiled back when she gave him a pat and praised him. But then, he deserved it. The woman was well pleased with how nicely he'd been working.

The engine seemed so calm that she thought it an auspicious time to broach something she'd tucked away into the back of her mind. "Oh, Henry. I meant to ask you… When we were leaving Abbey and had to wait a few minutes while they finished clearing away that big tree that fell near the tracks…well, you seemed reluctant to move on for a bit there. Was there some specific reason for that?"

Henry's smile vanished, replaced with guilt. "I'm sorry…" he began.

"Oh, no no, there's nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart!" the woman hastened to add. "I'm just curious as to why you hesitated. Did you see something that concerned you? Something that might have scared you?"

Her engine took a few deep breaths, relieved. He'd assumed the worst, of course, but she really didn't seem at all upset about his brief earlier lapse in paying attention; she just seemed interested in what had distracted him.

"I—I saw the tree they were cutting up," he tried again, "and I thought—I thought about the trees in my forest." His expression turned pleading, his voice almost plaintive. "Do you think they're all right? The trees? That the storm didn't knock them all down?"

"The trees in your…oh! Of course. Henry's Forest up past Crovan's Gate." His driver went silent for a moment to think. "Henry, honestly, I don't know right now. I don't remember seeing any thunderstorm tops over that way, but that doesn't mean they didn't get some weather. It's a fair distance away, after all. Did your forest get damaged before during a storm? Is that why you're worried?"

"Yes! Overnight once. There was a terrible storm, all over the Island, and a lot of trees got blown down. It was awful."

"That sounds like it was a pretty major event," Denise said. "The sort of damage the bad weather caused today was a lot more localized, Henry. It's quite possible that your forest only got showers or even nothing at all. But again, I'm just guessing. I do know that if a lot of trees came down up there on the tracks that we'll get a safety warning about it. If Gordon's last express run went off as per usual earlier, it should be fine. And the Flying Kipper's still scheduled to go out tomorrow morning as far as I know, so maybe we can get a personal report off whoever takes it once they're back from the job." She paused to reach up and pat Henry's buffer beam reassuringly. "That sound like a good plan to you for now, sweetie? We should know for sure what happened elsewhere by the time we report for work tomorrow at Knapford."

The human's matter-of-fact acceptance of the possibilities had already succeeded in easing a lot of Henry's fears. He was able to smile again when he replied that he did indeed think her suggestions a good plan and assured her that he'd be able to wait now for an official report. And even if the worst had happened, the humans had replanted his favourite forest once before…they could do it again. And there was work at hand to be done in the valley right now and he and his crew were needed. That final thought was all it took to finish restoring the engine's good spirits and his own confidence.

Henry's two flatbeds were shunted back at that point, piled high once more and safely lashed down for travel, and the big green Stanier soon set off again with his replenished train. He was feeling much better for having shared his concerns for his forest and could better concentrate on his current job too. A great many people were awaiting his arrival again at the station at Kirk Machan when he pulled in just a short time later, and the foreman from before even gave him a pat on the edge of his running board and a thank you before turning his attention back to the other workmen and the important business of again unloading what he'd brought them, especially the additional big waterproof tarps to finish covering up the ruined roof of the community center. The last thing anyone wanted was to risk more water damage beyond what some of the buildings had already suffered, especially given that the next day's forecast was for more showers. Henry and his crew watched the locals as they quickly redistributed the supplies to a number of waiting lorries, then zoomed off to continue working on the priority repairs while they still had a little daylight left. Fortunately for everybody, the current, almost clear conditions, with barely a remnant of cloud to be seen anywhere, were expected to last throughout the night and there was going a full moon too.

As with the folks living in the village further south, the residents of Kirk Machan had requested that the flatbeds Henry had brought them be left to double as waste repositories, and as soon as he could, he shifted them over into the south-bound through siding. A friendly-looking older woman came over from the station just as Pierre finished uncoupling his engine, walking partway across the tracks.

"Hello, dearies!" she exclaimed. "Wouldn't you like a lovely hot supper before you go? Compliments of our Auxiliary, of course!"

The Doyons looked gleefully at each other. They'd been making do since the late afternoon by nibbling on biscuits and hard cheese off and on and hadn't been expecting to eat much else until they got home. Now, here was this angel of mercy offering a proper free meal. They accepted, of course.

The ladies—three of them, as it turned out, and each more cheerful the next—had come to feed the stationmaster too, and Denise helped him bring a folding table and chairs out onto the platform while Pierre readied Henry for a short rest. The women's idea of a proper supper went far beyond what the Canadians could have hoped for. Each tray was heaped high with helpings of the local variant of shepherd's pie, savory beef stew, scoops of mashed potatoes and broad beans, and that was just the start of it. There were also platefuls of sausage and cheese slices, hot, fresh-made sticky buns, and even bowlfuls of the repulsively named yet delicious blood-and-matter pudding. And tea of course, what seemed like a whole gallon of it in a giant pot to pass around and share. The ladies hurried back to their car as soon as they were satisfied with the way the three railway workers had been provisioned and drove off to find more hungry people to fatten up. They promised to come back later to pick up the trays and cutlery and warned that they expected to find not a single scrap of food gone to waste.

Dusk was already coming on as the Doyons and the stationmaster ate. It was a well-nigh perfect evening by now, warm and summery with a light breeze and not a hint of the early morning's oppressive humidity left behind. The day's violent storms had wrung it right out of the air and sent it dashing back down to the ground as downpours. While the three of them dawdled over a last cup of tea and dessert, the stationmaster provided a vivid blow by blow—or should that have been a bolt by bolt?—description of what it had been like to experience the storm while manning his stationhouse. The only good that had come of it, he concluded, was that he could say with certainty that the building and platforms were still weatherproof and that the station itself was well sited to withstand localized flooding.

Henry had watched for a while when the humans first tucked into their supper. He felt safe on the siding and his crew was only a shout away, a crew which he knew would come running to aid him if he needed help. Reassured, he'd closed his eyes, just for a moment, and had fallen fast asleep right around the time everyone started reaching for the sausage.

The engine didn't wake up again until he felt movement within his cab and his fire being stoked back to full life. Darkness had fallen while he'd slept and his lamp had been turned on. Henry yawned. He felt refreshed, but fatigue was still nipping at his wheels, ready to steal upward and drag him down if he carried on for too much longer, and he was very much looking forward to getting home.

Henry's crew checked in one last time, then off the lot of them went, heading for Tidmouth at last. The rail lines coming and going were still free and clear and the two stations further south had gone into unmanned mode for the night. When they went through the outskirts of Abbey, Henry sadly eyed the remains of the trees which had been felled by the lightning. He knew that the humans valued the hardwoods in particular and would try to salvage as much as they could off them and turn them into beautiful furniture, yet it was still distressing to him to see such magnificent old trees reduced to piles of cut-up scrap and logs for lumber.

They stopped only once, just before crossing the section of the branch line which had been flooded earlier, and Pierre hopped out to do a quick second inspection of the embankment beneath the rails in front of them. He even climbed down to check the two culverts and was able to shine his flashlight beam through them from end to end. If they'd been obstructed by debris earlier, it was gone now. It was likelier that they'd just been completely overwhelmed when the low spot had first been inundated, mute testimony to the fantastic amounts of water which must have poured down out of the storm above, all at once.

Hawin Ab, the river which ran down the length of the valley they'd just been working in, was swollen and running hard when they passed over its mainline viaduct. High though it was, the river's banks were in no danger of being overtopped and the dark roiling floodwaters were rushing past on their way out to sea without impediment beyond the viaduct's supports themselves. Even Henry seemed unconcerned and continued to steam on with confidence. Denise thought that the engine must've been too focused on getting to Tidmouth to fret anymore—all three of them were by then—and let him chuff on as quickly as was safe for him to do so.

Or at least she tried to let him go fast. They'd no sooner crossed Hawin Ab and reached a more open area with fields on either side than Henry started to balk, then sped up, then balked again. He appeared trapped by some indecision, unable to choose between avoiding or outrunning whatever new demon had seized him.

Denise had had enough. She didn't want Henry either bolting or screeching to a standstill again, nor did she want him getting it into his machine mind that there was something new and scary and unknown lurking near this particular part of the mainline, forever set to leap out and spook him whenever he ran by. "Watch out! We're halting," she warned her husband, and pulled Henry back through a rapid, though not quite emergency stop.

Halting right on the mainlines, for whatever reason, was always dangerous and Pierre hastened forward to again tend to the frightened engine. And he _was_ scared, his wide eyes glued on something off across the field to their left. "W'ad is it, Henri?" he asked. "W'at you see dis time, eh?" All while trying to sound curious and excited and not a bit scared himself.

Henry wasn't as startled by his fireman's appearance as he'd been the first time the human had quit his cab and come forward to help him, and merely glanced at the man before resuming his fixated stare. "I don't know! Something white."

"Anoder ghost, you t'ink?"

"No! It's-it's high up. In those trees over there."

The only trees Pierre could see were those comprising a dense hedgerow sited along one edge of the field, angling away from the rails. The rising moon was already casting enough of a bright silvery wash that the man could tell that he was looking at a recently shorn hayfield, but he could see nothing unusual at its periphery. "You see that white t'ing right now?" he asked more doubtfully and Henry again insisted that he could.

Pierre stepped down off the railway embankment and aimed his torch at the drainage ditch next to the tracks. It was a deep one and still full of water. He again studied the hedgerow way off across the field and then looked at Henry. The engine was still staring in the same direction and still looked scared and anxious, although he was managing to keep it together better than he had during the spider incident. Pierre drew a deep breath and made his decision.

"Henri! Can I trust you to stay still if I climb up?"

"What?" His fireman's unexpected query shattered his focus so much that he didn't know how to reply. What did the man mean, climbing up? He was on the mainline! "What?" he asked again, helplessly.

"I get up 'igh wid you so I can see w'at you see. So you stay ver', ver' still for me 'til I am up dere, okay?"

"Yes, sir!" Henry exclaimed. Of course he would hold still! He couldn't even imagine how terrible it would be if he hurt Mister Pierre. But terrible or not, it nonetheless cost him to set his fear aside and he shivered and shook in waves all the while Mister Pierre scrambled up over his buffer beam. As soon as he'd gotten onto the engine's running board, Pierre stepped briefly back to take hold of the handrail behind Henry's smokebox. The loco continued to stand fast, breathing hard and fast, waiting for further instructions. Pierre, reassured, sidled forward again.

Henry was still staring off across the field. Pierre took careful note of the direction of his gaze, looked off himself and—

"Ah!"

"You see something, hon?" called Denise, who'd been leaning out from her window and following along.

"_Oui! _Just like Henri said. Somet'ing white. I couldn't see it from de ground at all, but I see it from up 'ere wid Henri."

In truth, Pierre was a little astonished that his engine had spotted the tiny little patch of white that appeared to be shining through the branches of a big mature evergreen at all. It was probably just that the bright moonlight had made it flash which had caught Henry's always hyperactive attention and made him imagine the worst.

"_Bon_…ver' good, Henri," he told his loco now, patting him fondly on the cheek as he did so. "You 'ave some wonnerful sharp eyes, to see dat. Now, 'ow to get o'er dere to find out w'ad it is…"

"You're not going to wade through that ditch, are you?" Denise said. "You're sure to get soaked. I bet it's waist-deep."

"Maybe. But we 'ave to find out, right?"

"We should go on a little first. So you don't have to cross too much of the field."

"There's a road ahead!" Henry blurted. "It crosses the lines."

Denise began fishing one of her notebooks out of a uniform pocket. "Ohhh, he's absolutely right," she said, flipping through to one of her hand-drawn maps. "Would that be Samson Road, Henry? A dirt farming road?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

His driver smiled. She hadn't been too crazy about her husband's decision to climb up on Henry running board, especially from standing directly in front of him, but she also knew that Pierre was very astute when it came to assessing an engine's state of mind and his gesture of trust seemed to be paying off. Henry was no longer trembling and sounded far more excited than frightened now.

"Good!" she called. "Then it's up to the road we'll go. You hanging on, Pierre? Don't want you to go flying."

"Already 'olding on tight," the man yelled back, and Denise, smiling again, eased Henry's throttle forward. The engine rolled forward, nice and easy and without hesitation.

The intersection was only a few hundred meters further on. Once stopped again, it became obvious to the humans that the hedgerow was there to provide a natural buffer and windbreak between the hayfield and the road, and this time there'd be no ditch to contend with. Pierre clambered down and Henry overheard Denise tell him that on the off chance that they had to move, that he should stay put and they'd be back for him. Then, off the man went, vanishing into the deep moonshadow cast by the hedgerow, with only the beam of his flashlight left visible as it swung from side to side before him. Denise next addressed her locomotive.

"Henry! When you're stopped like this, you can feel the vibrations in the lines if another engine is running up behind you, even when it's still far away, right?"

"Y-yes," the green Stanier confirmed, a little surprised that she knew such a thing. "If it's a big one or has a train. It's harder when it's just a little engine by itself."

"Great! So I guess you know what I'm going to say next, that I need for you to stay alert and let me know at once if you sense anyone else coming along on our line, even if it's just a little tank engine."

"Yes! Of course, ma'am."

"Good boy. And don't be surprised if I blow your whistle if a car comes along on the road, too. The last thing anyone's going to expect is seeing an engine halted on the tracks right before the crossing and it'd be best if we gave them a little warning, don't you think?"

Again, Henry agreed. He hadn't even thought about a vehicle coming along and she was right. It wouldn't do to inadvertently startle some poor driver into running off the road.

And so the two of them, human and engine, fell silent and waited. Henry, who was almost holding his breath, was very nervous, worried about whether he'd be able to do as asked and detect any additional traffic on the lines in time, yet he felt excited too at the prospect of solving the mystery of what it was that he'd seen. He could feel his driver hanging over the edge of one of his cab doors, the position of her arm telling him that she was facing backwards, no doubt to better look past his tender and watch their back track. She was rubbing him absently, stroking her hand over the polished metal over and over. Henry wondered if she was doing it to calm him, or herself; humans did always tend to get the worst of it whenever trains collided. But there'd be no collisions tonight, Henry decided. He was sure that he could leap ahead and speed up fast enough to avoid being hit by any engine running up behind him, even if it were Gordon, as long as he had fair warning.

It was very still. Several marsh frogs, still excited by all the earlier rain, were trading yelping croaks in a distant wetland towards the north and a couple of early bush-crickets soon joined in from the field just past the road, otherwise silence prevailed. There was not a single human-made sound to be heard, nor the faintest wail or peep of a faraway whistle. Henry couldn't help but think that he must be the only engine still out on the lines that night and that all his watching was for naught.

Pierre suddenly returned, all in a rush. Denise clapped her engine's throttle open before the man was even fully aboard and Henry lunged ahead, as relieved as his crew to be underway again. The two humans didn't even talk until he'd built up a decent amount of speed and was no longer in any danger of being rear-ended.

"So?" Henry heard his driver ask. "What was it?"

"Anoder tarp. A big white one dis time."

"Holy cow! How the heck did it get all tangled up in a hedgerow?"

"I t'ink de storm winds drive it in. It's all wrap around dat one big evergreen."

"So it must've got lofted? Up over the fences from wherever it came from? That's pretty impressive. They must've gotten some heavy duty gusting hereabouts earlier on."

Pierre paused to shovel a fresh thin layer of coal into Henry's firebox.

"It came from a farm, I t'ink," the man mused. "It look like wad de farmers use for dere haystacks. Maybe one of de storms blow it off."

"That's exactly what I bet happened. The question now is, who's upwind who's missing a tarp?"

In the end, the two of them decided to simply pass on what they'd discovered and where it was to Sir Topham Hatt once they returned to Knapford the next day. Their boss knew where all the farms were which were serviced by his railway and might well be the one to field a call about a missing hay tarp once all the farmers had taken stock of their damages and losses. Denise also made a point of asking Henry if he'd been listening in and understood what it was that his fireman had found, a query which her engine was happy to answer in the affirmative. The last of his misgivings had vanished the instant he'd overheard Mister Pierre report that he'd found nothing but a tarp in the trees and the thought that they might be able to return it to its rightful owner pleased him. It was the perfect capper to Henry's exciting day, a day which had been filled with the satisfaction of performing well for the humans and earning their praise, interspersed with intervals of fear and doubt which—again, thanks to two humans in particular—had turned out to be not so fearsome in the end after all.

The three of them were so tired by the time they reached and quietly backed into the Tidmouth sheds that they for once were all fine with foregoing their usual end of the workday routines in favour of heading straight to bed. Henry was the lucky one that night, he thought as he sleepily watched his crew leave him and walk over to their car. He even felt a little sorry for them, that they still had a short drive ahead of them before they reached their own personal shed and could finally rest, but not so sorry that he didn't nod off before they even got out of the parking lot.

Henry managed to sleep right through the early morning departure of most of the other engines the next day and was well rested and wide awake by the time the Doyons returned to tidy him up before noon. He was glad his crew had shown up early. He'd been thinking a lot about the events of the day before and was eager to get back to work, even if it meant putting up with more showers from all the towering cumulus clouds he could already see forming again off in the distance. (Henry was quite proud of himself for remembering the proper name for rainclouds.) Actually, he was sure he could even tolerate a thunderstorm or two, as long as Miz Denise and Mister Pierre were with him to provide reassurance.

As it turned out, special reassurance was not required for Henry that day for all their work that afternoon had to do with moving freight between stations near the Island's western coastline. That part of Sodor hadn't even been touched by yesterday's violent weather and it remained dry again as the hours wore pleasantly on. By the time Henry and his crew finished up with a last stop at Knapford to confirm that the next day's routine would be as per normal and that they were slated to take out The Flying Kipper first thing in the morning, any shower activity which had developed was already past and the skies were once again clearing fast. All was back to being typically sunny and summery and another great evening appeared to be taking shape. With one welcome bonus…

Sir Topham Hatt popped out of his office as soon as Henry pulled in and beckoned to the big green engine's crew to come and join him. He had a surprise waiting for them, cooling on his office desk.

"Ah yes, perfect timing," he said to the couple. "So! I'm happy to pass on that we located the owner of that tarp you found last night, one Farmer Cooper and family, just as I suspected, and two of his sons have already retrieved it and came by to express their thanks. They got quite the nasty squall yesterday by the sounds of it. It wasn't the only hay tarp they lost, although the others luckily only got blown as far as the nearest fence line. They wanted me to pass on their appreciation for your thoughtfulness and a bit of a practical reward, thanks to Missus Cooper. I hope you like cherry pie."

The Fat Controller paused to stare longingly down at what Farmer Cooper's two big strapping eldest boys had dropped off along with their message. The pie was still warm and had been tantalizing him with its enticing odours for the past half hour, something which was not lost on the watching Doyons.

"Wow, what a nice thing to do!" Denise enthused. "It would have been enough to know that you'd found that tarp's owner, sir, but this is great. We love cherry pie."

"Yes, well, we all do what we can to help each other out in times of need," Sir Topham said, his eyes still cast downward. "You did good work yesterday, more than you needed to, and good work deserves to be rewarded."

"Gosh, you know, that's an awful big pie. I don't know if we could even do it justice, sir." She turned to confer with her husband, gave him a brief secret smirk. "What do you think, hon? Maybe just a slice apiece? We've got empty containers in our kit from lunch."

"Yes. Pie like dis, fresh an' warm, should be eaten right away. Why don' we take just enough for our supper an' you can take de rest 'ome to share wid your family, eh, Sir Topham Hatt? A part for you an' Henri's part too, since you own 'im?"

"Oh, that's kind of you." Another longing stare. "Perhaps…if you're sure…"

"Of course we're sure, sir," Denise insisted, grinning openly now. "The only thing we'd ask of you in return is that you thank Henry yourself for spotting that darn tarp in the first place. If it hadn't been for his keen eyesight and attentiveness, we never would have found it, sir, and we wouldn't have this lovely pie to eat."

"Quite right, quite right," Sir Topham replied, shaking himself out of his happy anticipation. "I'll go do that right now."

Pierre briefly left to retrieve one of the aforementioned containers and a knife while the Fat Controller went out to speak with his engine. "Bet he eats it all himself," he murmured to Denise in French while he was cutting off their share, and Denise whacked him and hissed at him to behave and be nice, although she couldn't help laughing too.

Whatever Sir Topham said to Henry, it was enough to leave the loco beaming and flushed with happiness by the time the Doyons finished securing their prize and then came forward to join their boss. Sir Topham was still so pleased that he insisted on shaking hands with his two foreign employees and thanking them again before hurrying back to his office. He even closed his door, his hint that he was not to be disturbed. Denise and Pierre cracked up again.

Henry still looked delighted as he regarded his crew. They gazed right back at him once over their amusement, just as fondly.

"Well, Henry?" his driver remarked. "It pays off sometimes to hang around and solve the scary stuff, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Henry said back. "Yes it does!" And never in his life had he ever been so glad to agree with a human.

to be continued…


	6. Part Six

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Six

Henry and his crew were called upon to continue helping to clean up after the storms the next day and were kept busy doing so for several weeks. Their work schedule soon fell into a distinct temporary routine. First, they'd do their usual early-morning Flying Kipper run, and then, after the humans took a short early lunch break, they'd retrace their route, ferrying empties back for the docks or goods that had come in from the Mainland. Sometimes Henry also picked up trucks or beds full of organic waste left for him on sidings near the eastern end of the mainlines and would take them as far as Cronk; he was a strong engine and could easily handle the added weight over short distances. Then it was off to deliver the main portion of his train and after that, they'd turn right around and begin their second job of the day…collecting all the storm fallout. Most of it went straight up to Whiff's waste dump in the very valley where the weather had done its worst. They also delivered logs to the local lumberyard and trucks full of construction waste to the scrapyard for processing or recycling. Despite Henry's fears, his favourite forest hadn't suffered much beyond small branches and leaves lost to some wayward gusting. The woods west of Great Waterton hadn't been so lucky, however, and Edward and Emily, who'd also been assigned to general cleanup duties, hauled numerous loads via Waterton's branch line over to the mainlines from out of that town alone for Henry to pick up and pull further.

The best day was when all three engines plus a rail crane, multitudes of trucks, and several dozen men spent the afternoon together, cleaning up the forest surrounding Henry's Tunnel. The storms hadn't really done all that much damage there and only a few already half-dead trees had gone down, but the entire area was due to be groomed anyway and there was plenty of brush growing near the rails alone which needed clearing. Both Henry and Emily delivered trainloads of waste to Whiff's dump that day and did such a good, speedy job of it that they had time for a little fun. Denise had long been itching to try her hand at driving Emily, and once back at the Tunnel, Emily's crew took the foreign driver off on a quick jaunt to do just that. They weren't gone long, only as far as the nearest looping turnaround, but it was long enough for Denise—and Emily—to come back with great big smiles on their faces. Even Emily's usual driver was elated. "The North Western's first lady driver drivin' our best lady engine," he proclaimed. "Now I've seen everything." Edward and Henry were all smiles too. Nothing made a good engine happier than to serve his people well and be appreciated in turn.

A few more days after his pleasant stint working with Edward and Emily and with most of the storm cleanup finally done, Henry found himself being steered back to the Tidmouth sheds at closer to his more usual time, the midafternoon. A spell of bad weather had been moving in since noon and they luckily beat the first of the sprinkles by less than half an hour. By the time the Doyons got him cleaned up and settled in, it was raining in earnest, and Henry peered out at it from his snug dry shelter, feeling grateful and a touch smug. Everyone but him was going to get rained on. James would probably whine about it for hours or at least complain until Gordon got fed up with him and ordered him to shut up.

On this day, however, his driver had a surprise for him. She gathered her utensils and buckets as usual when she left, yes, but then came right back with her camp stool in hand and a large book under one arm. What she had for Henry was a big picture album she'd borrowed from one of the local libraries which was written for little kids and all about spiders.

The big green Stanier was instantly fascinated. For the first time, he got to see what spiders really looked like close-up, even the little baby spiders. There were photos of them hatching out of their egg sacs, clustering together en masse just as Mister Pierre had said they did, and even climbing up onto the tips of branches to shoot thin lines of webbing out into the air so the wind could catch them and carry them away…the 'ballooning' Miz Denise had mentioned. He was also amazed by the intricacy of some of their webs and how beautiful some of the spiders themselves were, especially the big plump ones who sat right in the center of the webs they spun. Denise read the brief text which went with the pictures out loud to him as she flipped the pages and did her best to answer his numerous questions. It was all too wonderful… Henry couldn't remember any humans doing anything like it since the War, when his crews had sometimes shared the headline stories in the newspapers they liked to read or told him about the news they heard on the radio. But learning about spiders was better. The stories in the old newspapers had just made him sad for the most part and had sometimes frightened him.

When Denise was done, she clapped the picture book shut, took note of his sparkling eyes as she gently patted him, and asked him if he'd like it if they read together again. "Actually," she added, "maybe you could even help _us _out. Pierre and I were always big birdwatchers back in Canada and knew just about all the species there. Your old crew mentioned that you're keen on birds too. If we got a guide, about what sort of birds live here on the Island of Sodor, could you maybe help us to recognize them? I bet you've learned a lot on your own over the years and we could share any additional info that's in the guide."

Henry embraced her offer with unrestrained delight. It turned out to be the last key the Doyons needed to unlock their locomotive's big heart, to cater to his love of nature and indulge his need for attention. Reading to him nurtured something in him, they discovered, something deep and profoundly grateful. It strengthened his trust in his crew as never before and because of it, he felt ever more free to be himself when around them and not worry about any perceived inadequacies or disappointing them; he knew now that they'd still like him even if he did. Henry was an engine who needed badly to be liked. Liked by his fellow engine friends and even more so, liked by the humans who held his fate in their hands.

A more interactive loco was exactly what Pierre and Denise had wanted and both were pleased to share their own interests and railroading experiences with him in turn and continue to indulge him. They found out that in addition to learning all he could about nature that Henry also loved being told stories, especially scary ones. They knew somewhat how he felt. They too loved the spooky stuff and were huge fans of horror movies and sci-fi, the crazier the better. Most of their favourites didn't really translate too well for engines and what sufficed to frighten Henry seemed pretty tame, yet still they indulged him. Denise scoured the libraries again, this time for kid-friendly stories about ghosts and pirates, and Pierre began telling Henry about the indigenous spirits that roamed the Great White North and primeval forests of Canada. Personally, Denise thought that Pierre's pronounced accent always reduced his tales of terror into laugh fests rather than horror fests, yet Henry remained enthralled and would always listen with rapt attention, trembling from time to time as he safely gave in to his fears and let his imagination run wild.

But it was their mutual love of everything to do with the outdoors which most united Henry and the Doyons. Despite Henry's lack of sophistication as locos went and his usual timidity about asking questions of strangers, he'd nonetheless learned a good deal over the years just by carefully listening to the people around him when they were chatting with one another. He was actually able to help his crew quite a bit as they began their quest to acquaint themselves with all the new birds in their new adopted country and proud to share what he knew about his beloved trees and all the little creatures which called them home. In exchange, Denise and Pierre tried to expand his knowledge beyond the bare basics. They told him about the great migrations which some of his feathered friends took part in, which was why some of them seemed to disappear each winter. They likewise explained that the little bunnies he liked so much actually led surprisingly complex lives and that groups of them lived together in little underground towns just like human beings. Even the heavens opened up for him. Denise began teaching him about the stars and planets that one could see in the night sky with the naked eye and how they formed fanciful patterns which humans had named long ago. She taught him more about the weather and what all the different sorts of clouds were called and what it could mean when you saw them. Henry was always an avid pupil. He enjoyed his work more than ever now that he knew more about the world he observed all around him and had human friends who were willing to share their knowledge anytime.

Another thing which Henry learned about for the first time was that many of the creatures and plants he loved actually had _two _names, one the everyday, common name which everyone used and another much more complicated, foreign-sounding name which Miz Denise said was typically based on a very old human language not much used anymore, yet understood by naturalists around the world. It was, she told him, the only way to make sure that everyone in every country knew exactly which creature one was talking about sometimes because their common names could differ quite a lot.

"Sometimes what an animal's called even differs from one part of a country to another," Denise had expanded further. "For example, you have cormorants living here along the seashores of Sodor. We've got cormorants in Canada too. But there are some people there, on our East Coast, who wouldn't know what you're talking about if you asked them if they'd seen any cormorants…they only know them as shags. That's why all cormorants also have that second international family name of phalacrocorax. Every serious birdwatcher around the globe would know what you mean if you asked if they'd seen one of those."

Henry beamed as he digested her words. Denise had been cleaning Henry's face while she talked and had just gotten finished with drying him off, and he could feel Pierre just starting his routine cleanup in his cabin. As usual, they were the first engine and crew done with their work for the day and alone in the sheds. Henry was glad. Ever since his driver had discovered how much her loco liked to hear stories and learn about nature, she'd gotten into the habit of telling him something new or even bringing along something to read to him every time they were alone together after he'd been settled into his berth.

As she finished up with Henry's grooming on this day, a distinctive though distant rasping sound caught Denise's attention and put a smile on her face as well. It sounded as though someone's nearby residential garden had a visitor of a sort she was more used to hearing further afield.

"There's another example," she remarked. "Do you know what that is, Henry? What's making that twittery, chirpy sound?"

"That's a bush cricket," Henry replied with confidence. "They're big and green."

"Exactly right. And that's what everyone here on Sodor calls them and over on the Mainland too…bush crickets. And yet, over in Canada and in the United States, we don't call them bush crickets at all. We call insects like that katydids."

"Katydids!" Henry echoed. He laughed a little. "That's a funny name."

"You think so?" Denise patted him, glad to see her engine so happy, wanting to amuse him further. "What's even funnier, Henry, is that people call them that over there because it's exactly what some of their songs sound like…they sing katydid…katydidn't…and so forth. There's even a little fable about why katydids sing the way they do."

"A fable? That's like a story, isn't it? Tell me!"

"Okey dokey… Well, in a little village in America, there once lived this young woman named Katy. She was passionately in love with the handsomest young bachelor in the village, but he didn't even notice her and loved another. Eventually, the handsome man and his lady got married, and the very next morning after they did, both were found murdered in their wedding bed and Katy had disappeared and was never seen again. It was widely rumored, of course, that she was the one responsible for their deaths, but there was no proof, and even the night insects, who were the only creatures who'd witnessed what had happened, couldn't agree on what they'd seen. So that's why they argue about it to this very day, some of them saying that Katy did it and others claiming that Katy didn't."

The woman paused, anticipating that Henry would have another good laugh. But instead he looked appalled.

"She…she _killed _them?" he exclaimed, horrified.

"It's just a silly fable, sweetie…"

"But it's awful! Why would she do that?"

Denise silently regarded her upset loco, first with bemusement and then with mounting admiration. A melting expression crept over her face, leaving her soft and compassionate.

"Oh Henry, you really are the kindest engine I've ever known. You even feel bad for made-up people who come to grief in imaginary stories, don't you?" she murmured, then stepped right up next to his face and leaned against him.

"What do you—" Henry started to say and then snapped his mouth shut and went still, forgetting all about Katy and her probable—or not—evil deed. Without meaning to, he had very much pleased his driver and she evidently felt compelled to press the side of her face against his in a gesture of affection. No one had ever done such a thing to him before. He could feel the warmth of her cheek and the funny tickle of her curly hair and her one hand was on him too, stroking him alongside his long nose.

A sense of great peace and contentment began to steal through the locomotive. It seeped down into the lowest recesses of his very being, coaxing out the shadows which had resided there for decades, the same shadows which had once left his trust in people in tatters. He understood finally what it was that distinguished the woman's touch and made it different from all the others he'd experienced. The men he'd always liked best, they touched him with kindness, and the ones he liked best of all were gentle with him; even Mister Pierre's strong hands, in the midst of strapping up his polish to a lustrous shine, managed to maintain that lovely quality of gentleness. But Denise, she touched him with tenderness. The tenderness of a mother doting on her child.

Henry closed his eyes and sighed, basking in the radiance of knowing himself to be well cared for and loved.

Elsewhere, at about the same time and not that far away, Sir Topham Hatt was likewise feeling moved. He'd just spent several happy hours paging through several photo journals and collections of articles and technical papers loaned to him by Pierre Doyon, who'd dropped them off during his stop at Knapford Station earlier before lunch. Sir Topham had already known that the Canadian fireman was a bit of a shutterbug—photography was a popular hobby for many on Sodor—and he'd once mentioned that his wife liked to write little pieces for a variety of railroading publications as a means of keeping up her foreign language skills. But this, what he'd just been looking through, this was impressive. It wasn't just mementoes of their lives to share, it was a bona fide historical record of Canada's own railways and latter-day steam era, captured via the Doyons' own black and white photos and terse prose and laid out in chronological order.

Here were the Canadians' own versions of the great Northern engines, thundering across the endless flat grasslands of the country's interior prairies, pulling phenomenally long trains of grain or shuttling passengers at speed across hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. Here were the big burly freighters hauling lumber out of the dense forests and spraying snow to either side like dual waterfalls as they cleared the tracks in the wintertime with their massive plows. Pierre's photos had even caught some of the harrowing vertigo engines and crews alike must have felt as they crept carefully along the lines cut into the sides of the Rocky Mountains…and now that the Fat Controller saw what a mountain in North America looked like, even he had to smile at what passed for one on the Island of Sodor.

He reached for one of the folders which contained copies of the articles and other materials which the Doyons had sent in to various publications over the years. It appeared to be yet another of the foreign collections and Sir Topham thought at first that it was all written in Dutch again—Denise was originally from the Netherlands, after all, and still had relatives there—but after looking more closely, he thought that he recognized some strictly German words. Interesting…Then again, Europeans seemed to think nothing of picking up additional languages. His new driver's language perks was definitely something he'd keep in mind should he ever have dealings with Continental railway men in the future…

The Fat Controller turned back to one of the photo journals, the most recent one. It had pictures of some of the government engines the Doyons had driven in Canada, handsome locomotives which he liked the look of a lot. This fellow here…parked on a track with Denise standing in front of him at a Union Station in Ottawa… He already recognized its type for he'd seen one just like it at the railway show he'd attended over on the Mainland a few years ago, the engine from the United States named Vinnie. Even though he hadn't cared for that particular loco's personality, he'd been very taken by its streamlined, juggernaut-like appearance and its specs were impressive too. This one posing with Denise looked a lot friendlier and appeared to be a variant of the same design; he didn't have the horizontal bars across his front.

Sir Topham slipped further into his happy memories of the railway show he'd gone to not so long ago. He was usually far too busy managing his railway to get very involved with such exhibitions, but there was no denying that it had been quite an exciting venture and he'd even come home with a trophy! And meeting other Controllers and owners and the engines themselves…it had frankly whetted his appetite and enthusiasm to the point where he'd even impulsively inquired as to whether the other engine he'd really liked, the Belgian loco, Axel, mightn't be available for lease. Luckily, Axel's owner had turned him down with a good-natured laugh and a comment to the effect that he'd likely be lynched by the entire railfan community back in Belgium should he ever do such a thing, and Sir Topham had laughed too, mostly at himself. He was normally not given to such impetuous behaviour and, in retrospect, had no idea where he would have even kept the big red foreign engine, given that the main sheds were all full. Yet there was no doubt that Axel was an attention-grabber and Sir Topham couldn't get rid of the image his imagination had conjured up as soon as he'd laid eyes on the loco, a persistent image of Axel wowing the tourists as he pulled up in front of a cruise ship newly docked at Brendam. A lot of tourists had been coming to Sodor recently and there seemed to be more every year. It was getting hard to schedule enough tours to accommodate them without cutting into the engines' regular work.

An interruption to the Fat Controller's reverie arrived at that moment in the form of one of his aides, bringing him a cup of tea and a fresh, steaming scone. Sir Topham started a little guiltily before accepting his aide's offerings and glanced at his clock. Teatime already? Really? But yes, it certainly was, and it wasn't as if he'd been shirking his duties…it really was a very quiet afternoon, with not a single emergency or problem or delay yet reported. He went back to flipping through the Doyons' most recent photo journal while he ate his scone. This one…this engine…the Royal Hudson… He liked this engine too. A more classic look about it than the fully streamlined engine photographed at Union Station and he liked the history behind its common name. And due to be phased out soon, just like all the other steamers still running in Canada. It was sad, yet understandable. Canada was just too big a country and its railways just too expensive to run to favour tradition over reliability and the bottom line.

It was a concern which the Fat Controller himself had been pondering as of late. Even though he fancied himself a staunch traditionalist and had every intention of maintaining his steam fleet for many years to come, he also wished to be perceived as progressive and forward-thinking when it came to the future of the North Western Railway. Hiring the Doyons had been a step towards attaining that desirable perception and he was delighted by how well his gamble was paying off; both were just as competent as they'd appeared on paper, were personable and well-behaved, and made for excellent figureheads. Best of all, from all he'd managed to garner, Henry and his new crew had taken to each other and were working very well together. It was a major relief for Sir Topham, who'd been very worried about finding someone to take over the big green Stanier once his old crew moved on. He knew that Henry could be high strung and tricky to handle and was therefore unsuitable for all but the more experienced drivers and he'd unfortunately earned himself the reputation of being a problem engine, which put some candidates off. But the Doyons, they'd claimed they liked the challenge of working with quirky engines and it seemed to be true. And Sir Topham had had a hunch… He'd gotten no further than the second page of their initial letter inquiring about employment opportunities on the Island before the sudden notion _I think Henry might like a woman's touch _had floated unbidden through his mind. It seemed a faintly sexist notion to him upon reflection afterwards, and yet the idea, once planted, remained. Before the day was over, Sir Topham had managed to contact one of the Doyons' references in Canada via telephone, a high-ranking official working for the country's national railway, and gotten back exactly the sort of answers he'd hoped for. And Henry did indeed go on to enjoy his new driver's touch, once he'd gotten past their rocky introduction, and seemed to like his new fireman just as much.

Sir Topham smiled to himself as he recalled how the Doyons had sat with Henry out in the Knapford yard during the early afternoon when they'd had the big storm in the valley. They'd no doubt stayed with him while they waited so they could reassure him and in return Henry had turned in an excellent day's work and made himself exceptionally useful; it was the sort of partnership the Fat Controller liked to see between all his engines and crews. Henry's old crew was getting on exceptionally well with Edward, too, so what at first had seemed like a minor personnel crisis, had all worked out for the best after all. The right engine for Henry's old crew and the right crew for Henry…that was the essence of what it took to keep one's work force happy and productive, engines and men—and now woman—alike, Sir Topham thought.

He turned back to the photo journal once more. Some of them really were gorgeous engines and all due to be phased out within the next decade or two. It was the main reason the Doyons had inquired about working on Sodor. They couldn't bear to see the death of steam power or watch as so many of their engine friends were taken away. Sir Topham had talked about it a little bit with the two of them when they'd first arrived, their mutual love of steam. The Canadians believed that there'd eventually be a nostalgic desire for the revival of steam locomotives, but by then it would be too late for many railways; the engines themselves would be long gone and few people would be left who'd even know how to care for them or crew them. It would only be such companies as the North Western and others too stubborn to switch over their fleets to the more modern diesel-electrics entirely who'd be in a position to take advantage of the coming revival, they'd said to him, and if there was ever anything the pair of them could do to help tailor their new railway towards tourism in the future…well, they were always available. The Fat Controller had liked the way his new employees had spoken for he sometimes thought about such things himself, how best to balance his family's beloved traditions with the cold hard need to make plenty of cash. Tourism was definitely one option for he'd seen for himself how it was growing. And if ever there was a time to invest in it…

Somewhat to his own surprise, Sir Topham found that he'd gotten up on his feet with his cup of tea still in hand. He strode out onto the station platform, waving away his inquisitive aides as he did so, then walked alone over to the Knapford goods yard, and not the goods yard proper, but an additional piece of land which had been slated for expansion long ago, yet never fully developed beyond laying in a few sidings for the storage of rolling stock. There he stopped and simply stood for a while, stirring his tea from time to time with a spoon, shifting about the slice of lemon floating in it. The undeveloped section was bigger than he remembered, but then, the tantalizing engines floating about in his mind were uncommonly large too. They'd need a big roundhouse with big berths…_very _big berths…

Slowly, pausing now and then to sip his tea, a faint smile on his face throughout, Sir Topham Hatt began pacing out some measurements…

to be continued...


	7. Part Seven

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Seven

The second great event that year which would forever alter Henry's world began innocuously enough only a few weeks later. It was now late summer teetering on the verge of becoming fall. Although the days were still warm, the nights were sometimes coolish and lengthening again, and the Doyons and Henry were again picking up The Flying Kipper in the full dark.

Denise and Pierre were still loving their job and their big green loco. Henry had been working very well for them as of late. He'd only spooked twice, and the first time had been when Cranky the crane had let a load drop at the docks with a resounding crash. _Everyone _had understandably jumped at that one and Henry had only lunged a few feet before he realized what had happened and stopped on his own. The second time he'd scooted was when two young buck deer suddenly ran out of a thicket right next to the tracks and almost chased each other right into the side of the slow-moving locomotive. They'd realized their mistake just in time and swerved to race past Henry's front instead, and the sudden flash of movement darting into the engine's field of vision from behind had given him a start. Even there, though, he'd only sped up over a short distance and willingly came back to hand as soon as Denise spoke to him. He was beginning to trust his crew's judgement over his own, given that the two humans could look about and see immediately what was going on all around them, whereas he had to always wait until he was properly positioned to see anything at all.

He also balked, but only once and for a very good reason. Denise felt him back off on his momentum in a way which suggested he meant business one pre-dawn morning while they were on their way down to Brendam and preemptively pulled him to a quick stop at once. It turned out that she didn't even have to ask as to his reason for wanting to halt. It lay scattered all over the tracks, revealed by Henry's headlamp only a hundred feet ahead, as soon as they'd stopped moving.

"What is that?" Denise exclaimed, peering out. "Hay or straw?"

"Straw bales, I t'ink," replied Pierre. "I go move dem." And he hopped down out of the cab and went forward to the railway crossing to deal with them.

Denise was left behind to shower her engine with heaps of praise and petting. She knew that engines could see better at night than humans could and was very pleased that he'd been alert enough to make use of his advantage and demonstrate some initiative. "Great job, sweetie," she enthused. "You were right to want to stop. It would have made a right mess if you'd just plowed straight through those bales, even though you could have."

"I-I'm sorry I didn't have time to say something." Henry apologized.

"Don't be silly. I could tell you wanted to stop without your needing to say anything at all."

"Oh. You…could?"

"Of course. We're always paying attention to the way you're moving and chuffing. Just listening to the way your steam blows through as your pistons work tells us a lot about how well you're functioning. It's like us using your controls to tell you what we want you to do, except you use your whole body. No words required, really."

Henry was quite intrigued by the notions her words put into his mind as they got underway again. Pierre had stacked the bales he'll pulled off the tracks and vicinity in a neat little pile by the shoulder of the road and expected they'd be retrieved by the midmorning. "Someone took a big load 'ome late last night and dose bales come off de back when 'e get jostled going over de rails," the man guessed cheerfully.

"Probably," Denise agreed, "and I hope they appreciate that someone was good enough to pull them safely aside and not leave them for someone like Henry to come along and scatter to the winds. Can you imagine, all that straw going flying? The crossing would have looked like the inside of a farrowing shed."

Henry, who'd been listening in, smiled. He was glad he'd decided to stop, even if it was for what amounted to more of a nuisance obstruction than a dangerous one, and even happier that Denise had sensed his intent and immediately backed him up. He was starting to get his crew's assertion that the best partnerships were like two-way streets.

But there was no balking on this particular fine predawn morning. Henry carried his crew all the way to Brendam with not a single hitch that day, his mood excellent and his confidence high.

The only downer they encountered, once down at the docks, was that the fishermen on the ships weren't very pleased. They'd come in early overnight because the fish were all stirred up and eluding their nets, and they'd collectively only managed to catch enough to half-fill a single van.

"There's a big storm plowing towards the English Channel," one of the ship captains complained to Henry's crew while they made conversation. "Lots of swell rolling off it, even way up here in the Irish Sea. Look…see how we just bobbed? The odd swell's even getting us here. I swear, it chased all the fish down deep. Not much point staying out, not to mention that it was getting a mite uncomfortable."

Denise and Pierre expressed their sympathies. Neither were keen on boating and perfectly content to consider themselves landlubbers. Just the thought of rocking back and forth in the dark and up and down while trying to catch a school of elusive fish was enough to make them consider tossing their cookies.

Somewhat fortuitously, a lot of goods had been unloaded from other weary vessels the afternoon before and there were plenty of other things besides fish to deliver, enough to make up a full train for Henry plus a few extra trucks which emptied the freight sidings completely. Henry pulled away strongly, well up to the challenge. The folks at the docks were glad to see him go. Once out of the dockyard and underway, all the laden trucks, beds and vans were no longer their responsibility; their safe-keeping had now passed on to the engine and his crew, who would in turn relinquish them to the receiving party awaiting their arrival at the next depot.

The leg of their journey up to Vicarstown again went off without a hitch. After that came an uncommonly long midday break for all three of them; they were going to ferry on another freight train straight over to the stations on the west coast of Sodor, or would as soon as said train came in from the Mainland. Henry spent the intervening time dozing in the sun at a freight platform and his crew treated themselves to a plowman's lunch and did a quick round of shopping. Denise even snagged a couple of new stories for her loco at a used book store and tucked them gleefully away into the kitbag she'd been carrying slung over one shoulder. The shopkeeper watched with curiosity as she did so. Like many locals, she knew exactly who her customer was—it wasn't as if there were many female engine drivers on Sodor, after all—and she wondered why the supposedly childless couple were buying books intended for kids.

"A surprise for a special little friend, are they?" she guessed, smiling kindly. The other woman, not at all put off by the shopkeeper's inquisitive remark, smiled back.

"Special and a friend. Maybe not so little," she replied, and left it at that,

Once back at the Vicarstown freight yard and while preparing to go, the Doyons discovered that the rear guard who'd been assigned to their run was a friend of theirs and asked him if he'd mind if they went for an extra measure of speed that afternoon. "Wot? Miss out on an extra hour off this evening? Hardly!" he snorted. It was all the encouragement Denise needed. She put Henry over on the fast track as soon as they got underway shortly afterwards, intending to let him pull his train just as fast as the regulations allowed.

Henry, naturally, was delighted by her decision. Pulling a lot of weight at speed always made him feel strong and fit. The hot steam rushing through him generated a wonderful sense of well-being that increased the faster it sped from his boiler to his cylinders and he loved the sheer sensations of running hard and how the scenery all around him fell away at a steady rapid clip. Yes, life could be good for a locomotive, if said locomotive was lucky enough to have a crew aboard who understood him. Then Henry heard Gordon's insistent whistle, coming up behind him, ruining his fun.

It was the midday express, of course, doing its return run to Knapford. The Pacific had evidently pulled out of Vicarstown not long after Henry had already left and was now letting him know that he wanted to steam through on the fast line. Denise ignored him, even when Gordon whistled again, and Henry hesitated for a brief beat, although he didn't actually slow down.

"Easy," she murmured to her engine. "We're okay. There're some points coming up and Gordon can switch over just fine if he wants to go by."

Another whistle, its tone angrier, but then, sure enough, Gordon switched expertly over onto the center line and Henry heard him start chuffing up on his right-hand side. It took a while before Gordon got right next to the other engine—Henry really was moving right along—but that didn't matter. As far as Gordon was concerned, Henry had been in his way and had stayed in his way and that was all it took to make him mad.

"Henry!" he shouted as he drew even with the hard-working green Stanier. "Why are you on the fast line? You're far too slow!" He blasted his whistle one final time before kicking it up a notch and whooshing on ahead. "Get out of my way next time!" he yelled back before mercifully drawing far enough ahead for further threats to go unheard or perhaps he was just too breathless to continue. Either way, Henry was left hurt and feeling no small amount of anger of his own.

"Why did he say that? I'm not so slow!" he exclaimed. And then added, addressing his driver, "Am I?"

In Henry's cab, Denise and Pierre exchanged looks and inwardly sighed. Like most railway crews, the last thing they wanted to do was get mixed up in the engines' interpersonal lives. Locomotive problems were for the locos to figure out. If humans got involved at all, it was usually via an oblique approach, such as when the Doyons had made a point of getting themselves checked out to fill in as one of Gordon's relief crews while at the same time befriending him. But this, this was a direct query, made by an engine and directed at humans he'd come to trust. After all the work and time they'd put into establishing a good relationship with the intelligent machine, they couldn't let him down.

"No, you're fine, Henry," Denise said at last after a long moment of silence, unable to think of a way of avoiding the issue without causing further hurt. "You're going more than fast enough to use this line. And it's not as if Gordon couldn't get by."

"Then why did he say those things? He's always saying things like that to me, that I'm too slow or not careful enough."

Denise again paused before answering. "Well…you have pulled the express in the past, haven't you?"

"Yes!"

"And the passengers liked you, I bet? Sir Topham Hatt was pleased with your work?"

"Yes they did! And Sir Topham Hatt said I did a good job, a really good job. Good enough to replace Gordon all the time."

"Ah. And Gordon heard that, did he? Or it got back to him? Because if it did…well, don't you see, Henry? Pulling that express is Gordon's most favourite job in the whole world, but now that he knows that you can do the job just as well as he can, he's probably afraid that you'll take the express away from him."

"But I wouldn't do that." The disembodied voice now sounded puzzled. "I'm happy for Gordon that he likes pulling the express so much."

"I'm sure that's true, sweetie, but it's really not up to you. It's Sir Topham Hatt's decision. And if he wants you pulling the express instead of Gordon…well, Gordon would be out of luck, I'm afraid."

"Oh… I didn't really…"

Henry trailed off. It was hard for him to imagine Gordon being afraid of anything—he always seemed so confident and full of himself! But if he genuinely thought that Henry might replace him…

"Is that why he gets mad at me?" Henry finally asked. "Because he thinks I want to pull the express and might try and get Sir Topham Hatt to let me do so?"

"Probably. Gordon's a fine, proud engine. I'm sure you'd agree with that. But he does seem a little…possessive when it comes to work. Locomotives like him, we've found that they tend to worry quite a lot about other engines taking over what they like to do best."

"Yes," Pierre chimed in, deciding to add his own words of wisdom. "Dat _bleu grand, _when 'e yell at you dat you're slow, wat 'e really mean is dat 'e's afraid you're too fast, just as fast as 'im. So 'e give you a 'ard time whenever 'e can. You just let 'is words run off like de rainwater and remember dat, Henri. You're 'is friend, but also maybe a little bit the rival, eh?"

"Oh," Henry said again. So now his crew thought Gordon worried too, just like he did? If true, he certainly hid it well! Yet their words made a certain sort of sense. Henry had only known a limited number of other engines during his lifespan, but the Doyons had likely known and worked with a lot more. Maybe they'd known one just like Gordon in the past and that was why they already seemed to understand him so well.

"You feel a little better now, sweetie?" Denise asked, cutting into his musing, and Henry discovered that he did feel better and that Gordon's latest hurled accusations no longer seemed so harsh. It was just the big blue Pacific expressing his anxiety over wanting to keep his favourite job. Henry could sympathize when it came to feeling anxious about anything.

"I'm okay," he said, "and I think I understand. I'll try not to let Gordon bother me too much and won't say anything about it either."

"Atta boy. And now let's get back to enjoying this lovely run of yours. It's far too nice an afternoon to waste any more of it talking about grumpy old Gordon and his moods."

"Okay," Henry agreed with a little laugh, and buckled down to enjoy the remainder of their cross-island journey, just as ordered. He'd return to what the humans had said about his shed-mate later, when he was alone and had time to fully think about it all.

As it transpired, the brief altercation with Gordon was the only glitch in their otherwise splendid day. Henry made great time and delivered his freight even earlier than anyone had hoped for, and when he returned to his shed in Tidmouth that evening, Gordon seemed to have forgotten all about the encounter which had sparked his bad temper and was entirely cordial. Gordon and his moods indeed… Henry again wondered how his crew could read him so easily and whether there was a Gordon twin over in Canada.

As for the Doyons, they spent much of their time off before retiring listening to their shortwave radio, tuning in first to a news station in France and then checking in with one in Holland. They were interested in the fierce storm mentioned by the fishermen at the Brendam Docks and which was supposedly barrelling its way through the English Channel. They'd even seen the edge of the system as they'd driven home from Tidmouth, just a big arc of distant high white hazy cloud anchored by a dark smudge all along the southern horizon. Sure enough, the reports they listened to revealed that some coastal portions of France and England plus Belgium and the Netherlands were being or were about to be hammered hard and that the Channel waters were currently nothing less than a maelstrom to be avoided at all costs. Pierre and Denise eventually went to bed experiencing missed emotions…their practical, sensible selves feeling glad that they were well out of it and that Sodor wouldn't be impacted, their inner weather weenie selves sad that they were missing out on all the excitement.

By the time they fell asleep, the good people of Denmark were already preparing for a direct hit

to be continued...


	8. Part Eight

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Eight

Even Gordon's changeable moods were as nothing compared to the vagaries of nature. When Denise and Pierre again tuned in to update themselves during breakfast very early the next morning, they discovered that Denmark had braced itself for nothing. The storm, inexplicably, had broken free from its upper steering winds and drifted away and stalled somewhere in the middle of the North Sea. Or so it was assumed, given the sudden paucity of any coastal reports of actual bad weather. It wasn't until a number of ships and fishing boats caught by surprise and fleeing shoreward had radioed in and the sea states began building anew that the system's new position and inclination to simply sit and rotate could be verified with any degree of accuracy.

Meteorologists living in all the countries bordering the North Sea began keeping a close eye on the wayward disturbance, and for good reason. They could tell that it was becoming the worst of lows, a cold-core low, its surface center now augmented by an upper low, the two of them together aligning to form a deep depression in the atmosphere into which the surrounding air now spiraled at greater and greater speeds. For two days the storm remained almost stationary as it fed on the energy supplied by the summer-warm North Sea, gathering strength, then it was again caught up by the flow about a neighbouring system and did what lows in that part of the world weren't supposed to do; it began to drift slowly back towards the southwest.

It announced its intent with a blood red dawn, seen by people as far westward as Ireland that third morning. Everyone who was up early enough on Sodor saw it too, and many of the Island's commercial interests plus scads of private citizens immediately began monitoring the forecasts being broadcast from England and Scotland. The only good thing about such a rare retrograde event was that Sodor for once would have plenty of warning as to what to expect. The incoming storm would have to first vent its fury upon the Mainland, and Sir Topham Hatt, as soon as he saw for himself what was potentially coming, began contacting the Controllers of several Mainland railways to compare notes and to request a heads-up later, if things got bad.

Yet for now, at least on Sodor, all was still well. They were sheltered from the sea effects of the approaching tempest and the high cloud streaming across the sky ahead of it was harmless, though portentous. Denise and Pierre, who'd been following the progression of the North Sea storm all along and who were having trouble keeping their inner glee at bay, even used the progression of cloud types that day as a weather lesson for Henry and pointed out the beautiful halo that developed about the sun at noon, along with a profusion of sun dogs. All evidence that a frontal system was coming, they told him, albeit an extremely unusual one that was coming from the wrong direction. And possibly a dangerous one too, that might be speeding up overnight, or so they began to hear at the stations as their workday wound down.

By the time the Doyons got Henry back to the Tidmouth sheds, it was official; Sir Topham wanted all the engine crews to check in before they took their locomotives out the next morning as there was a good chance that their morning work would be cancelled or delayed. Henry was the only engine who'd be expected to go out as usual to the Brendam Docks to pick up his Kipper run, but as to how far he'd go after that…the Fat Controller was leaving that up to the Doyons' own judgement. The main thing was to get the fish safely unloaded and packed for rail travel, and if the weather came in early, the train could wait until the worst was over. The Doyons had zero problems with their boss's decision. In fact, they thought that the opportunity to watch the storm blast through down by the seaside while sheltered in the big dry rail warehouse right on the docks with Henry and maybe even the two dock shunters, Salty and Porter, sounded pretty darn sweet.

The incoming bad weather was the talk of the shed that evening once all the engines were back and Henry listened in without comment for the most part, already feeling glum and resigned about getting wet the next day, yet heartened too by what his crew had told him about the option to take shelter down at Brendam if things got too bad. He supposed it might even be somewhat enjoyable to watch the weather come in as long as his human friends were with him to explain what was happening. The big green Black Five cast his gaze upward. Thicker cloud had finally rolled in to cover the sky completely and he could barely see the sun anymore; it was just a broken sort of glowing spot still shining through. Sometime overnight the overcast would get even lower and then the rain and the wind would start. Henry began hoping that the nasty storm would speed up and come in even faster than forecast. If it was already raining when his crew came to fire him up, he'd probably get to stay in his cozy berth in the roundhouse all morning with his friends and that seemed to him the best option of all.

Alas, Henry's preference was not to be. It was still dry out when his crew came for him the next morning and remained dry all the while they fired him up and did his initial checks. The stars had been muffled out of sight by a thick cloud deck all night, yet it was still relatively high-based and the visibility was still excellent. Only the steady, relentless wind, which had noticeably increased in strength over the past hour alone, served as an ominous warning.

The direction of the prevailing wind had also allowed the Doyons to do a little quick forecasting of their own.

"Center's still tracking through south of us," Denise remarked, speaking with her husband in French so as not to alarm Henry unnecessarily as they got set to go. "Damn. Looks like we'll get the worst of it after all. Those crazy wraparound fronts…"

"I think they're zipping up too," said Pierre. "What Newcastle reported, it sounded just like a trowal passage. Plus that squall line ahead of it."

"Yeah, hurricane-force gusts. That's all we need." She finished with the entries she was making in Henry's logbook in his cab and tucked the volume back in its nook. "I'm thinking we should stay at Brendam just in case, no matter where the line's at right now. Although…I swear I can hear thunder way off now and then. It couldn't just be the surf, not yet…could it?"

"No, I think I hear something too. Something very low… I almost want to ask Henri about it because I think they can hear lower frequencies than we can, the locos, but I don't want to scare him."

"Yeah, best leave him be. It's going to be a rough day for him…"

Their preparations done, Denise signaled Henry to move ahead. He completed only a single revolution of his driving wheels before his driver pulled him to a halt again. A car had just shot into view and was parking right in the yard next to the shed tracks.

"Uh oh. Maybe they're cancelling us after all," Denise murmured.

Both humans and Henry waited. To no one's surprise, Sir Topham Hatt got out of the driver's seat. What happened next, though, was totally unexpected. Two more adults got out, a woman and another man whom they recognized at once as Sir Topham's eldest grown son, and both of them turned back to the car to deal with something in the back seat. An instant, odd foreboding seized both Doyons. Pierre was already out and on the ground by the time Sir Topham came hurrying up.

"Oh thank goodness, you're both still here!" he exclaimed. "Forget the Flying Kipper. I need you to fire up Gordon as quickly as you can."

"Wad's going on, sir?"

"It's Bridget. My granddaughter." He looked back at the other couple. "She's taken ill. A terrible fever. We can't get it down. We've got to get her up to the hospital in Vicarstown, but the storm's already gone through Vicarstown and it's too much for Harold."

He paused to draw breath and glance back again. Now Denise and Pierre could see the stricken girl for themselves, being carried over to them in her father's arms. Even under the low illumination of the shed lights, she looked alarmingly pale and far too still.

"She's burning up," Sir Topham added. "We need to get her help as fast as possible. So could you fire Gordon? Please? I think it's the best option left. To go by rail."

The two Canadians exchanged their own brief looks, made their decision, made their pact. Pierre turned back to confront the Fat Controller.

"Sir, dat take too long, to fire Gordon," he stated with firm resolve. "Henri is ready now. 'e's a ver' fast engine too, sir. Faster dan you know."

Sir Topham hesitated. Memories of Henry's past unreliability flashed through his mind, the engine's timid nature, the way his irrational fears had once frozen him in place. But Pierre looked so adamant. And he knew his engine.

"Fine. Go," Sir Topham decided and stepped back so Pierre could take his granddaughter out of her father's arms and carry her aboard the green Stanier instead of the blue Pacific.

There then occurred a brief, heartbreaking scene. Bridget's mother followed Pierre and Sir Topham as they prepared to climb up into Henry's cab, fully intending to join them, but her husband restrained her and refused to allow it.

"You can't. It's too dangerous," he hissed quietly as he turned her about to regard their nearby car. Stephen, their son and only other child, was waiting in it, his pale, anxious face pressed up to one of the windows. He looked terribly frightened and alone. "You can't let Stephen risk losing his sister and mother both," he argued. "You can't!"

Weeping, the poor woman capitulated and let herself be led away again. Her husband turned his head and caught his father's eye as he steered her back to their vehicle.

"Dad? Godspeed, Dad. We'll meet you up at the hospital."

"Yes," Sir Topham replied, his voice sounding choked. "Drive carefully. Don't take any chances."

"I won't. If we're late it'll likely be because of a washout or flooding. In case the lines go down and we can't call, I mean."

"All right," the elder Hatt acknowledged, and then both men turned away from each other and back to their respective tasks, wearing nearly identical expressions of determination and grave concern.

Pierre ran off to retrieve a few more items and quickly got Sir Topham and the little girl settled on a blanket on the floor at the back of Henry's cab. The sight of the normally jovial little man, looking so helpless as he sat there with his motionless granddaughter clutched tight in his arms, his top hat for once set aside and his bald head gleaming with sweat, was one of the saddest things Pierre had ever seen. He tucked an oil tarp partially over and around the pair. "You ged wet, I'm afraid, sir," he murmured apologetically, "but dis is de safest way. An' maybe de cold rain keep Bridget a little cooler." Sir Topham nodded his understanding. He knew as well as any human present that it was going to be a rough journey.

Meanwhile, Denise was preparing someone else. She'd disembarked and gone forward to half-hitch herself up between Henry's buffers as soon as the situation had become clear so she could look at the engine's face while speaking to him.

"Henry? You've been listening in, right?" she asked in an urgent whisper. "You know what's at stake here, that we have to get up to Vicarstown as quickly as possible instead of going to Brendam?"

"Yes," he whispered back. "Bridget's sick, isn't she? Really sick. Do you know what's wrong with her?"

"No. All I know is that you've got to go fast, Henry, if you want to help her. Even an extra minute could make a difference, so when I tell you to run, you run! And you keep on running, no matter what, just as fast as you can until I ask you to stop, okay?"

Henry received her words with considerable trepidation. His driver had never been so stern and serious with him! But he trusted Denise and he loved her, and he was willing to do whatever he needed to in order to please her…and Sir Topham Hatt too, of course.

"I will," he promised.

"Good. Fast as you can, Henry!" And she gave him one final pat and jumped back down. Henry nervously bit his lower lip. She hadn't said a word about the incoming storm, which he interpreted as meaning that he was supposed to ignore it as much as possible. He hoped they'd at least make it over Gordon's Hill before the rain started.

Henry felt his controls being taken up and cuing him to move forward again. He finished rolling ahead, out of the shed and onto the turntable. Despite the high drama of what had just occurred with getting Sir Topham and Bridget aboard and the other people driving off, they'd all managed not to wake any of the other engines and none of them saw Henry leave the roundhouse to begin his race against time.

It became apparent at once that theirs would not be the usual run. Denise ran Henry up much faster than she ever had before as soon as they were away from Tidmouth and didn't slow down at all for the first station. Instead she blew Henry's whistle, a loud TOOT! TOOT! TOOT! of warning, as if he were a runaway and out of control. They ran straight through Knapford as well with more warning whistles and Henry had just time enough to see that the platforms and offices were already all lit up, long before the station typically shifted over into full service mode. Several people even appeared to be watching for him and waved him on, cementing the importance of his new mission in the engine's mind like nothing else. They normally _never _made so much noise so early in the morning, nor would they be allowed to run so fast through any station at any time.

"Don't worry, Henry," Denise suddenly spoke up, just as if she was reading his mind. "We'll be breaking a lot of regulations this morning. It'll be all right. There'll be a lot of people up early today and all you need to do is just keep going and nothing else. Pierre and I will handle the rest of it, okay, sweetheart?"

Henry's faint misgivings receded. He hadn't even known that he'd had misgivings, just that his driver's words had eased something in him and that he was able to carry on with a lighter heart. Sir Topham Hatt was looking up, at his two employees, and he was feeling lighter too. He hadn't had to say a word to them about how to best handle the emergency, they simply knew, and they knew how to get the best out of their engine, he was certain of that now. It helped erase any lingering doubt he'd had about choosing to use Henry and he began to think that they had a real shot at getting through in good time after all.

They made it safely through Crosby next and Denise bumped Henry's speed up a few more notches to a level just short of plain reckless. Sir Topham still said nothing. He knew Henry's crew was trying to get their loco over Gordon's Hill and as far east as possible before running into the storm front. But they'd run into it eventually and Sir Topham already knew it would be bad. The people he'd talked to up at Vicarstown just before driving down to Tidmouth had told him it had struck them like a pure hurricane, nothing but torrential downbursts and furious winds and almost continuous lightning. He shifted Bridget into a more comfortable position on his lap and used a handkerchief to wipe some of the feverish sweat off the girl's face. She was only semi-conscious and barely whimpered as he tended to her and a part of him was glad. He knew she was a little bit afraid of thunderstorms and he didn't want her to be scared on top of her misery.

Henry kept running, faster and faster, still warning everyone that he was coming with urgent toots of his whistle as he roared through the stations and crossings at unprecedented speeds. The one good thing about the incoming storm was that many emergency people and even ordinary citizens were already awake and preparing for its arrival. Their lit-up residences, providing guidance in the dark, and their general alertness made it easier and safer for Henry to continue charging on, even through those communities where the startled inhabitants couldn't have had the slightest idea why a crazy engine seemed to be running away from its crew. Only the railroad workers at the activated and manned stations on the mainlines knew why, for the Fat Controller had requested that a general warning about his intended emergency run and updates be passed on as much as possible.

Denise and Pierre got their wish. They made it over Gordon's Hill, past Maron, Cronk, and even Killdane, and still there was no rain and the way remained clear. But then the obscuring mass of the Island's interior highlands fell away to the north and for the first time, they could all suddenly see what was waiting for them.

"Jiminy H. Cricket," Denise couldn't help muttering to herself.

It was the front, or the trowal, or the squall line—they were never entirely sure which, even afterwards—and it stretched out before them from north to south, marked by a row of marching thunderstorms generating a spectacular show of lightning. Much of it was flashing within the clouds themselves, illuminating their roiling details. Other bolts skittered over the cells' exteriors, or reached for their neighbouring cells or the ground. The overall effect was majestic, mesmerizing, and a little terrifying. And it was close. The odd rumble was already getting through Henry's loud chuffing and the whine of the wind whipping past his cab. They'd be lucky now to make it as far as Kellsthorpe Road before getting slammed.

The Doyons exchanged another telling glance. Both of them knew what the other was thinking without either of them needing to voice it—if it was going to be their time to go, at least they'd go together. There'd be no surviving a derailment at the speed at which they were running.

In the end, Denise declined to say anything more to Henry too. He'd been responding magnificently to her cues ever since she'd last spoken to him before Crosby, sprinting as fast as possible whenever she opened up his throttle, easing back promptly whenever they needed to slow to negotiate a curve or other hindrance. All he needed to do was continue on as he had, and drawing his attention to what he could surely see for himself wouldn't help any. She put her free hand on the inside wall of his cab next to his throttle lever instead, a steadying hand, she hoped. She knew it steadied her.

Henry did feel her steadying hand and appreciated it. He was also somewhat glad that she hadn't talked to him as well for he couldn't have answered her: he was too absorbed in trying to ignore the horrifying sight ahead of him, the whole horizon alight with thunderstorms. Racing through the dark while he could still see quite well had actually been manageable for him, even a little thrilling at times. But that, he knew, was about to change. The rain would cut his vision, badly, and make the tracks slippery. The wind might make the trees—no, he couldn't afford to worry about any of those things, not now! Think instead about poor sick Bridget, about how Sir Topham Hatt was counting on him. And about how much getting to Vicarstown would please all the humans, especially Miz Denise and Mister Pierre.

When the first blast of rain hit him, it lashed across his face like a spray of bullets. Henry, startled, couldn't help yelping with fright. It felt more like hail than rain. He'd never experienced anything like it. The initial blast became curtains of rain, solid streams of rain, which his headlight couldn't penetrate. Punishing gusts tore at him. A sudden flash half-blinded him and thunder roared so loudly he could feel it. Since Henry couldn't see anything anyway, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, which at least blocked out the terrifying lightning. He began trying to concentrate on his need for speed instead of on the noise and wind and rain pounding on his body.

"Fast as I can," he whispered miserably aloud to himself. "Fast as I can…"

It at least overrode some of the din. He repeated his words, turning it into a mantra, keeping his eyes closed. He could feel his driver's hands on his controls and his fireman stepping about in his cab as he fed his fire and knew that the two of them would look out for him as best they could. _…fast as I can…fast as I can… _Yes, it was becoming bearable again. Focus on the power of the steam propelling his six great drivers, breathing in rhythm with his chuffing… His crew would do the rest, would keep him on track.

_…__fast as I can…_

Henry drew upon the potential speed handed down to him via the engineering genius of his triple designs and the pumping of his pistons became a blur. His long-dormant stubbornness rose up, narrowing his concentration all the more. The bedlam all around him faded and fell away, forgotten. The engine suddenly flew, functioning with perfect alignment and synchronicity, his disparate parts meshing at last…

He plunged forward, into the storm, and the squall line swallowed him up.

to be continued...


	9. Part Nine

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Nine

Meanwhile, up at Vicarstown, the stationmaster was getting his people ready to receive the oncoming loco and his passengers and make sure they'd come in on the correct platform, the one closest to the main road outside. The station proper was still undamaged and its immediate tracks clear, but the telephone lines to most of the rest of the Island had gone down shortly after they'd last spoken with Knapford. It was a frustrating development, to say the least.

"Why tonight of all nights?" the stationmaster moaned, not for the first time. "Any other night, Harold could have picked the girl and her family up, right by her house, and had her here in minutes. But instead… We don't even know if they're still on the rails."

"Don't say that," one of his aides chided. "We have to stay positive. The ambulance just pulled up outside, by the way. Someone should be inside in a couple of minutes."

"Tell them to take their time…"

The stationmaster gazed off down the line they were keeping wide open for Sir Topham's arrival. The rain was still coming down in sheets, but at least it was blowing past the spacious openings and not coming in; they'd been lucky with the wind direction. The thunderstorms had moved off too. It was a sign that conditions were improving, he supposed.

Again he checked his watch. "When was it they said that engine went through Knapford? Twenty after?" he asked, addressing his colleagues waiting nearby. One of them pulled a notepad out of his jacket pocket and glanced at it.

"Twenty-two minutes after, exactly. And the phones went down five minutes later."

"Okay. So what's Gordon's record for his express run? Anyone know? We can maybe extrapolate from that."

The same man who'd referenced his notepad looked up again, confused.

"Gordon? It wasn't Gordon. The guy I talked to said it was a green engine that went through."

"Henry?" the stationmaster exclaimed. "You mean Henry?"

"I guess," the notepad holder said. "The big green engine, that's what he said. That's Henry, right?"

A subdued silence fell over the little group. For a minute, all that could be heard were the sounds of the storm, still pounding on the station like surf.

"Geez…" one of the other men finally said.

"Henry's pretty fast, though," another, more optimistic man, one of the station guards, opined. "He was probably still sittin' there, gettin' set to run down to Brendam, and they took him to save time. That's what I woulda done."

The stationmaster grimaced, unconvinced.

"Well…nothing we can do about that now," he said. "So let's add…what? Fifteen, twenty minutes to Gordon's time? Anyone got a clue?"

"Gordon usually does his run in—"

_toot! toot! toot!_

Everybody went silent again. They started glancing at one another, unsure of what they thought they'd just heard, wondering if the others had heard it too.

"Was that an engine?"

"Can't be. Maybe an emergency—"

_TOOT! TOOT! TOOT!_

This time it was unmistakable, and already it sounded considerably closer. The station workers, galvanized by the insistent wails that could only have come from a steamer's whistle, sprang into action, still in some disbelief yet unable to deny the evidence of their own hearing. The guard that had expressed his support of Henry grabbed a lantern and ran down the incoming line and outside, meaning to guide the engine onto the correct track if need be. Other men ran to the door where some of the ambulance personnel were just coming in, to help them with any equipment they might be bringing in. For long seconds all was organized confusion, the disbelief edging over into wonder and a bizarre exhilaration. Henry was coming! He'd made it, by gosh! And now they could even see him, his single headlamp piercing the darkness and growing larger and larger.

The engine roared into the station, bringing with him such a violent surge of air and flinging so much rainwater that it seemed as though he were plunging directly out of the ocean and onto a shoreline track. His brakes screeched intermittently as his driver worked to slow him. He stopped finally with a last long hair-raising squeal only a little past where the rescue party was setting up on the platform and then just sat, with rivulets of water still cascading down, wreathed in steam and heat and exhaustion. Pierre was out of his cab before the engine had even fully halted and wound up carrying Bridget straight out to the waiting ambulance, trailed after by Sir Topham Hatt and several medics and rail workers. At the same time, Denise disembarked on Henry's other side, stepping down onto the gravelly ground between his track and the neighbouring rails. For a driver to do so was normally a flagrant safety violation, but it was not a normal morning, not at all, and the woman knew there'd be no other traffic on the lines for hours yet.

Denise strode forward to inspect Henry's undercarriage, already grimacing in anticipation of what she might find. The last part of their trip, once fully immersed in the storm, had been a nightmare. Towards the end, Henry's wheels had begun to slip and something had started to clatter. She also already knew that he'd hit several obstructions on the rails, obstructions which his speed and weight had managed to cut through or smash aside, although he'd shuddered violently throughout his entire length each time. Scariest of all had been the moment when his tender had taken a terrific blow from something large, metallic, and likely airborne. It had jolted them so badly that Denise had thought for a few seconds that Henry's back end might derail and pull them all over, but no, he'd held fast and charged on. Just as fast as he could.

Denise began to smell fresh sap and pine pitch as she worked her way along. Henry must've run over some large limbs or small trees. His underside was likely clogged with their pulverised sodden remnants. And here was a coupling rod half lifted off one of its bolts and then she saw another which appeared bowed and out of true—no wonder she'd heard clanking! The more she looked at Henry, the worse it got. It seemed to her a pure miracle now that the engine had remained on the rails at all.

Tears began to mix with the rainwater still trickling down from her soaked hair. She'd just done exactly what she'd sworn to herself she would never do, run a locomotive so hard for so long that he'd damaged himself. When she finally came around in front of Henry, she could barely bring herself to glance at his face. Just the sound of him, still panting for breath loudly enough to drown out the deluge and the howling winds blasting over the station canopy roof far above them, made her feel guilty and sick.

A ladder was bolted to the side of their platform just in front of Henry and Denise began to climb up. She'd only gotten halfway to the top before the engine suddenly roused himself and spoke to her.

"Did…did we…make it?" he asked.

Denise regarded him with tremendous sympathy. He looked just as bad as she'd feared, his flushed face full of suffering, yet his breathing did appear to be easing and his only concern was for their stricken passenger. She wished she had some concrete good news to give him.

"Henry…I just don't know right now and that's the truth. She was alive when the medics took her away and we'll just have to wait to learn any more."

"Oh," Henry exclaimed, weakly. Denise reached out to stroke his buffer beam.

"The one thing I _do _know," she continued on, "is that you did the absolute best you could to get us here as fast as possible, the _best_ you could. That's all we asked of you and you did it. You got us here safe and sound—and through such a terrible storm, too! I'm so very, very proud of you, Henry. You need to be proud of yourself. No one could have done any better."

He smiled at that, a faint, brief smile. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." She patted him some more, blinking back tears again. "Well, you rest now. You deserve it…" Henry did as told and closed his eyes. "…my brave thoroughbred," she added, whispering, and then lost it and finished climbing up the ladder and onto the platform.

Pierre was there, waiting for her all alone by the Stanier's cab. She ran to him and hid her face against his chest while he held her and rested his chin on the top of her head for a while.

When she'd regained her composure, Denise asked him whether he'd heard anything more about Bridget and he sadly shook his head in the negative.

"Nothing new. How's Henry?"

"Hurting. He almost blew some coupling rods."

"I'm not surprised. He lasted, though. Just long enough. That's what counts."

Denise was still hanging onto him, needing his comfort. Pierre fished out the timepiece he always kept in one of his breast pockets when working, the one his parents had given him when they'd gloomily accepted that he'd be a railway man for life and which had a stopwatch feature, and showed it to his wife. He often used it to time the runs his engines made and estimate their speeds, and he'd just timed Henry.

The woman's misery vanished the instant she saw where the watch's hands had stopped.

"Ho-lee… This is from just past Crosby, right? When I first asked him to really bump it up?"

"No. I started it when we went through Knapford Station. I saw the stationmaster watching for us and getting set to call on ahead and we gave each other a wave."

Denise looked at the pocket watch again, astonished, turned her head to regard Henry, looked back at Pierre. Her husband flashed back a fierce grin before hitting the button to reset his timepiece.

"I always said that engine was fast," he concluded, and returned the watch to its usual place in his left breast pocket, the one right over his heart.

to be continued...


	10. Part Ten

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Ten

The massive storm eventually engulfed the whole of Sodor and began to fill and blow itself out. By the midafternoon, the wind abruptly fell away to nothing and the rain started to fall straight down. Its intensity varied as well, from hard and pelting to merely moderate and drenching, and it got very foggy.

It was rare for the weather to get bad enough to hamper railway operations, and the storm that was currently petering out would go down in the Island's history as one of the worst of those rare events and would later be named the North Sea Tempest for its unusual track. The ravaging squall line with its hurricane-force winds had forced almost every engine to remain in their sheds all morning and for much of the afternoon and many never went out at all. That included Henry's shed-mates. By the time the first wave of thunder and lightning had gotten close enough to wake them all up near dawn, Henry had already been well away on his mercy mission, and rumours soon began to fly about where he might be. Then someone overheard that the Fat Controller's granddaughter had taken ill and was near death and the rumours got worse. The Tidmouth engines were desperate for news when Mister Percival, who was filling in for Sir Topham Hatt, finally made his way over to check on his temporary charges that day once the winds died down and they immediately began badgering him with questions as soon as he quit his car and came close enough to peer at them from beneath his umbrella.

"What happened to Sir Topham Hatt?"

"Is it true that his granddaughter is sick, sir?"

"Where's Henry? Is he still at the docks? Is he stuck on the mainlines?"

The queries came so fast, all jumbled up on top of each other, that Mister Percival had to hold a hand up for silence before he could even think of how to answer them. Once the big locos had simmered down somewhat, he did his best to reassure them.

"Yes, it's true that Sir Topham Hatt's granddaughter, Bridget, became very ill overnight," he said, "and I'm happy to relate that she is receiving excellent medical care and will make a full recovery. Your Controller is currently with her and the remainder of her family at the hospital in Vicarstown and will likely be back at work the day after tomorrow. I'll be filling in for him until then in addition to my usual duties, so I'd appreciate an extra dose of cooperation from each and every one of you until he returns."

"Of course, sir," Edward was quick to reply. "I'm sure I can speak for us all when I say that we'll do our very best to help in any way we can. And thank you for the news about Bridget. We're all very fond of her."

"Yes, she's a lovely child. It would have been a terrible tragedy to lose her."

"Did the storm do a lot of damage, sir?" asked Emily.

The Thin Controller sighed. "I'm afraid so. A lot of wind damage and debris on the lines, which is why we thought it safer to cancel most of the rail work earlier today. We have crews out already clearing things up so should be back on schedule again by tomorrow."

"Did Henry have time to get his train to Vicarstown, sir?" Percy inquired, a little anxiously. He was thinking about his cancelled mail train and how relieved he'd been about it once he saw how bad the weather got. He hated to think of his friend getting stuck out in the open somewhere with no shelter to retreat into.

To the tank engine's surprise, Mister Percival responded to his question with a big smile.

"Henry made it to Vicarstown, yes, but not with The Flying Kipper. He's the one who took Sir Topham Hatt and Bridget to the hospital and just in time, too, from what I was told. It was good luck and timing all around that the Hatts came here just as he was getting set to depart for Brendam. Driving up to Vicarstown by automobile would have been far too slow and using Harold simply wasn't an option. The storm came in much faster than expected, alas."

"_Henry _took them?" Edward exclaimed. His astonishment again spoke for all the engines present. They glanced at one another, their eyes wide, not knowing what to think or how to respond.

"Yes," Mister Percival replied, misinterpreting their sudden silence for simple concern. "He apparently incurred a small amount of damage en route, nothing too serious and it's being seen to by the station's fitters, and he should be fine to go to the steamworks under his own power by this evening. Which reminds me…Emily, Sir Topham Hatt would like you to take over Henry's Kipper run until he returns, and as for the rest of you, it should be business as usual tomorrow for those of you with regular duties. Your crews will inform you if there are any last minute changes, but we're not anticipating any." He paused to tilt his umbrella some and appeared to take notice of the rain still falling down for the first time. "Even this should end overnight," he added. "Tomorrow's forecast is for mostly sunny skies. Anything else any of you might like to know? As I already said, both Bridget and Henry are perfectly safe, although I'm unsure of any further details just now beyond what I already told you."

The Tidmouth locomotives again remained silent and merely regarded him, their expressions somber. The Thin Controller nodded with satisfaction. He had a lot of work still to do and needed to get back to his own railway and was pleased with how reasonably the big standard engines were behaving and how well they'd accepted his words. Sir Topham had told him in the past about how much of a handful some of them could be at times, yet all he'd had to do was assuage their fears to get them to calm right down and listen. The earnest visiting Controller simply didn't know enough about their personal interactions to realize that the engines were subdued due to their honest shock over what Henry had done rather than anything else he'd told them.

Indeed, it wasn't until the man had turned and was about to walk back to his car that one of the watching locos suddenly regained his voice and spoke up after all.

"Oh, Mister Percival, sir!" the big blue passenger engine, Gordon, called after him with some urgency. "If I might have a word with you…"

to be continued...


	11. Part Eleven

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Eleven

Mister Peregrine Percival wasn't the only person who stepped up that day. Up at Vicarstown, the stationmaster had stepped up too, and he went to the Doyons just as soon as Bridget had been safely gotten away and convinced them that they needed to look after themselves for a while; he would arrange for someone to come and tend to Henry once the engine had rested and recovered to some extent and would watch over him in the meantime. In truth, the man was feeling a little guilty for having doubted Henry at all and he was now determined to make up for his lapse. The phones were still down, but not to worry. The stationmaster lived quite close by and it was a matter of mere minutes for one of his aides to drive Henry's crew to his own home and turn them over to the tender and efficient care of his spouse.

The stationmaster's wife took one look at her two sodden guests and instantly took charge. She got them to go and clean up and provided them with temporary clothing and slippers so she could start drying their uniforms in the kitchen next to the warm stove. She made them a second breakfast and sat with them and listened to their story while they at first picked at their food and then began eating with more appetite. Towards the end, while everyone was downing a second cup of tea, their adrenaline rush wore off and both Doyons got a little shaky. Pierre started having trouble finding his English words and Denise's hands began to shake. The stationmaster's wife insisted that they go get some sleep after that, a suggestion met with considerable resistance at first, for how could anyone sleep, they argued, with the exciting storm still loudly pounding away on the little house and Bridget's fate still up in limbo? Their host ignored their protests. She shooed them into her own bedroom and closed the door. And sure enough, her guests had no sooner crawled into bed together and laid their heads down on the pillows than they fell fast asleep.

When they woke up again, early in the afternoon, the wind had eased and the rain was falling straight down past the windows in the bedroom. Denise and Pierre grabbed their borrowed robes and hurried out to find their host. The big smile she turned on them the instant they located her in the living room told them exactly what they were most anxious to know.

"She made it!" Denise exclaimed.

"Indeed she did," the stationmaster's wife agreed happily, and went off to the kitchen to check on the status of her guests' drying uniforms.

The phone lines had been restored shortly after noontime and the good news about their Controller's granddaughter had already made its way all through the Island's entire railway community. The Doyons thanked their host profusely for her kindness while they waited for another ride back to the Vicarstown Station. They felt wonderfully refreshed now that they knew that their harrowing predawn run had not been in vain and were eager to see how the mechanical half of their partnership was making out.

Henry's expression, when he first spotted his crew returning to him, lit up the whole platform.

"We made it!" he cried, looking as delighted as ever they'd seen him, and Denise burst into tears again, ruining the moment. She had to rush forward and reassure the suddenly alarmed engine that her tears were just happy tears, shed because she was just so darn relieved to see him looking safe and sound and _dry _again.

Some fitters had been looking at Henry, just as the stationmaster had promised, and were just as glad as the engine to see his crew come back. They were hoping the couple could move Henry over onto the neighbouring track so they could better inspect his other side.

"It's not so bad, really," the foreman of the little group told them. "Lots of crud up around his axels they'll have to pull out down at the steamworks once they've got him up on the lift, but he's actually pretty sound otherwise. We should be able to get you in shape to go down to the works on your own after supper."

"Seriously? But his rods… One looks ready to pop off. And I heard clattering."

"Weeelll, it likely sounded worse than it is. We'll do a couple of quick replacements and can tighten up the rest so he's safe to drive as long as you go slow." The fitter paused to reach up and give the edge of Henry's running board a friendly pat. "Normally, we'd be a little more worried about all the debris he's got packed up in there underneath him, but Henry's a bit of a poet…he's a long fellow…aren't you, old boy?"

The unexpected witticism gave both Doyons a welcome reason to laugh. Henry joined in and chuckled too, but Denise could tell that he wasn't at all sure of why the fitter's remarks were so funny and made a mental note to herself to explain it to the engine later. She knew what the fitter was getting at, though. Henry's firebox was a long way back from the worst of the shredded wood he'd picked up, and given how damp out it still was as well, accidental ignition seemed unlikely.

Poor Henry groaned when they first asked him to move after getting him fired back up, and he groaned again when he had to briefly go out into the rain to switch tracks and then reverse back into the station again. Still, it had to be done. The fitters converged on his newly exposed side to finish their assessments while Denise began scrounging around for a few towels to use on Henry's face. She felt a sudden need to get her hands on him, to feel for herself that he really was all right, and start apologizing in a practical way for her earlier harsh use of him.

The rest of the afternoon passed far more calmly than it had in the morning. It never stopped raining and the overcast remained as thick as ever, casting a pall reminiscent of twilight over the remainder of the day, yet at least one could go out again with some degree of safety; the worst that could happen was that one would get drenched. Other engines began to show up at some of the outermost platforms by teatime, most pulling work coaches or repair equipment or supplies. It made Henry, who was by now feeling quite chipper, think of the day he'd gone up into the valley after the big thunderstorms, to help all the little villages on the Peel Godred branch line.

It wasn't until it was coming on dark for real before the fitters were satisfied with their temporary repairs and Henry was allowed to leave for Crovan's Gate with the warning that he was not to go faster than twenty-five miles per hour. His crew and Henry himself could live with that. Even with the speed restriction, the steamworks were only an hour away, and the three of them set off with a good will, already relieved by the thought that their long, long, perilous day was almost over. Henry would soon be spending the night in the warm, dry, cozy works and his crew would be driven home and could crash in their own bed and wouldn't have to get up the next morning at all, if they liked; they already knew they'd been granted leave for as long as their engine was being repaired. Just a little longer now, just a few more miles to chuff… Henry felt terribly worn and he knew that Miz Denise and Mister Pierre must likewise be feeling very fatigued, yet he was happy too, in the knowledge that he still had some reserves in store and was going to finish his job under his own power.

They'd only gotten a short distance away from Vicarstown before they came on an unusual sight. There was a man on their track well ahead, waving a lantern and his free arm, obviously trying to get them to stop. The only reason they saw him so well in the foggy darkness and the rain at all was because he was standing in a pool of illumination being thrown by the headlamps of another engine, which was parked in the exit of a siding adjoining the next line over.

"Cripes, now what?" Denise muttered as she signaled Henry for an easy stop. "Maybe something new fell on the lines."

"I go see," Pierre said, resigning himself to his second soaking of the day, and hopped out to go forward and confer with the man on the tracks. Denise continued easing Henry forward as soon as the fireman had disembarked, pulling him up even with the loco over in the siding.

Henry, of course, glanced over at the other engine at once, trying to see who it was. What he saw shocked him.

"Gordon!"

It was him all right and he smiled as Henry drew up next to him.

"Hello, Henry. Enjoying the rain?"

"What are you doing here?"

"What do you think? I've come to take you down to the steamworks."

"Oh. Oh!" Now Henry was just plain flustered. "You don't have to do that, Gordon. I'm okay, really. I can make it on my own."

"No need of that," Gordon countered in a lofty tone. "I was up this way with a work coach and crew anyway, helping inspect the lines. We've already turned the coach and other men over elsewhere and my own crew and I thought we might as well come up and get you before we went home."

His explanation left Henry at a loss for words. He couldn't even remember the last time Gordon had deigned to take out any sort of work train; he typically considered such things beneath him. Both engines fell silent while Pierre returned to Henry's cab with the welcome news that Gordon and his crew were offering a tow and the big blue Pacific began the brief spate of maneuvers needed to get him out of the siding and over onto Henry's track in front of the crippled Stanier. Henry sighed when Gordon carefully reversed to align their respective buffers and he felt himself being coupled up.

"Thanks, Gordon," he said. "I am rather tired."

"Well, if you insist on trying to race along as fast as me, then you're bound to be tired. Now you know how I feel on a daily basis."

"Yes, Gordon," Henry replied, starting to smile. "It can be a pretty strenuous run."

"You've got that right."

Gordon started up and Henry felt the immediate powerful tug, pulling him forward. He relaxed completely, letting the fatigue steal up again, no longer caring. Gordon would no doubt lord it over him for weeks to come in exchange for this favour, but at the moment he didn't mind one bit. Henry's ordeal was over. He could rest at last.

Gordon suddenly spoke up again.

"You've done us all proud, Henry," he added, very quietly. "Sir Topham Hatt is lucky to have you."

Henry squeezed his eyes shut and felt on the verge of tears. It was the nicest thing his friend had ever said to him. The memory of it kept him feeling warm and content all through his tow down to the Sodor Steamworks, even though the rain kept sluicing down throughout, and he was still smiling when he was finally backed into the service bay which would house him until his repairs were complete.

to be continued...


	12. Part Twelve

A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE...

Part Twelve

Of course there was a formal ceremony later, once Henry was repaired and he and his crew were back at work, and Sir Topham Hatt decided to hold it at Knapford Station. Besides using the occasion to publicly thank his employees and his engine for their extraordinary efforts, the Fat Controller thought it might be nice afterwards for them to retrace the route they'd taken on the desperate late night when Bridget's life had hung in the balance, except that this time the little girl would be alert and aware enough to enjoy her trip. Bridget squealed with delight as soon as her Grampy floated the idea past her. She had no memory of her ride in Henry's cab. Her only recollection during her feverish interlude was of getting very hot and fading away and then waking up surrounded by clean white sheets in the hospital in Vicarstown. She wanted to experience what it meant to go fast, really fast, aboard a locomotive and not in a coach, either, and got very excited when Sir Topham promised that they'd do just that when they took Henry up to Vicarstown after the ceremony.

The question of just how fast Henry had run during his race up to Vicarstown had become a topic of endless rumour and speculation. His driver and fireman knew how fast he'd gone, but they never revealed what they knew and never would. The people up at Vicarstown Station had some idea, since they knew exactly when Henry had roared through Knapford. Yet for some frustrating reason, no one had thought to take note of the time when he'd unexpectedly arrived at the end of his run and his exact speed had again fallen into mere guesswork. All anyone could agree on was that Henry had run faster than anyone had ever seen him run and that he'd gone fast enough to help save Bridget's life.

The ceremony proper was held on a lovely, sunny midmorning with every engine that could be spared and many, many people in attendance. There were the usual speeches, several rounds of hand-shaking, the Sodor Brass Band played numerous rousing pieces, and Bridget looked adorable in a bright pink summery dress, holding her little bouquet of flowers which she would eventually give to Missus Doyon. Henry, the other prime attendee, also made for a memorable sight. He'd been freshly repainted while at the Sodor Steamworks and looked very dapper and very pleased with himself as he waited patiently at his platform.

Henry had reason to look pleased because he'd become a happier engine. Oh, he knew full well that he'd always be a nervous, high-strung locomotive. And he knew that his friends would still tease him whenever he did something silly like screaming when the wind blew leaves in his eyes and they would likely even call him a scaredy-cat at such times. But they also knew now that there was more to him. He could set his fears aside when he really needed to and could face any challenge thrown at him, no matter how much it frightened him, and that, Miz Denise had told him, was the mark of real courage, to behave bravely even when one was terrified. She'd also told him that he would never be sent away now, no matter what, because the Hatts would never forget what he'd done for their family, and that too was an incredibly comforting thought for Henry.

A wooden stand with steps had been pushed up to access the running board stepped down over Henry's leading axels and Sir Topham himself brought Bridget up to thank the engine directly. The little girl tittered at the sight of Henry's big face so close to her, but wanted to touch him even so. Her grandfather lifted her up so she could lean her head against the loco's cheek and pat him, just the way Denise sometimes did, and then added a spontaneous extra all on her own—she kissed the warm alloy surface and whispered, "Thank you, Henry."

The big green Stanier blushed furiously. He couldn't help it. "You're welcome," he murmured back, and then the watching crowd of humans started cheering and the other engines began whistling and the mingled brief uproar managed to divert Henry's attention away from his own embarrassment. He breathed hard while the humans climbed back down onto the platform and the stand was rolled away again, and had managed to calm himself by the time the little ceremony concluded and Sir Topham and Bridget and his crew all got into his cab together. The Fat Controller and his granddaughter waved happily to all their well-wishers as Henry obeyed his cue to slowly roll forward and depart Knapford Station.

"On to Vicarstown!" Sir Topham cried, leaning out of Henry's cab window and sweeping his arm forward with pompous exuberance. Bridget giggled again. A little wooden box had been placed by the window for her to stand on, plus a folding chair for the Fat Controller so both could enjoy their coming trip in greater comfort.

"Are we going to go really fast, Grandpa?" she asked, already bouncing with happy anticipation.

"Not too fast. Not yet. The other engines do have to work, you know, and we have to be safe. But later on, there'll be a few stretches where we can let Henry go and then he'll show just how fast he ran the night we took you to the hospital."

Bridget beamed. "Right through the storm! As fast as he could!"

"That's right! And he won the race, too. You're still here, with us. Aren't you?"

He tousled the girl's hair with affection and Bridget responded by squirming backward, demanding to sit on his lap. Denise looked fondly over at the pair from her driver's station. Now both of them were sitting and leaning out, gazing forward at the way ahead, the current Controller and probable future Controller, their positions and rapt expressions almost identical. The woman shifted her attention to her husband and caught his eye. He too had been watching Sir Topham and his granddaughter and shot back his own wordless approval and amusement, sealed with a wink. It was his way of letting his wife know that he too thought that the North Western Railway was in good hands and would be for many years to come.

And all the while Henry, that good kind gentle engine, kept steaming forward, even pulling a little now and then because he was so looking forward to being allowed to run again just as fast as he could. Only this time there'd be no desperate need for it, and no urgency and no fear. This time he'd be running for the very best reason of all, the one all fine locomotives built for speed loved most.

He'd be running for the joy of it.

THE END


End file.
